Links between breast cancer and pesticides

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Subject:  Links between breast cancer and pesticides.
 Date:     Mon, 15 Apr 2002 10:40:43 -0400
From:      Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization:     Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)

To:     Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
          Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide Regulation 

cc:    Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov

January-February 2002 p27 (English) - Natural Life,

Links between breast cancer and pesticides.

One in eight women will get breast cancer this year. It is the leading cause of death in North American women aged 35 to 50. Its cause remains elusive, with genetics accounting for five to 10 percent of cases, and other risk factors like lifetime exposure to estrogen and a high fat diet accounting for only another 15 to 25 percent of cases. So what about the other 65 to 70 percent of cases?

A Quebec family physician who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998 thinks carcinogens like pesticides are the obvious place to start looking. Dr. Nicole Bruinsma recently told a federal government committee that there is a link between pesticides and breast cancer.

Bruinsma was testifying before the House of Commons committee on the environment on behalf of the Canadian Public Health Association, a non-profit group comprised of health professionals concerned about disease prevention and health protection. Bruinsma is a family physician practicing in Wakefield , Quebec who has often spoken out about the need to curb the use of pesticides.

And she told the committee she has found evidence from studies of lab animals to humans, exploring links between rates of cancers and pesticide exposure.

Bruinsma, who is also a member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), says the human body has been invaded by at least 500 chemicals in the last 80 years. She warns that persistent organic pollutants accumulate and concentrate in fatty tissue, especially female breasts.

She points to studies of Inuit in the Arctic who have high levels of contaminants in their tissue and breast milk. They absorb these through the food they eat: whale and seal fat. This means the whales and seals are getting it from the food they're eating, too, she says.

Some evidence indicates women who have breast cancer have 50 to 60 per cent higher levels of organochlorines in tissues than women without breast cancer.

Organochlorines are chemicals made from chlorine. That includes everything from bleach to plastics, deodorants, paints, wood preservers, pesticides and cleaning solvents.

Researchers, public health authorities and environmental activists alike point to the vulnerability of women and children to these substances. In one study begun in southwestern Ontario in 1995 on the occupational backgrounds of 1,000 people suffering from cancer and published in the Lancet medical journal in 1998, women living in a farm setting displayed a high rate of pre-menopausal breast cancer.

Bruinsma says there is enough evidence linking pesticides to breast cancer to justify adopting a precautionary principle for their use. "How much evidence is enough?" she wonders.

Well Mr. Helliker, "How much evidence is enough?"

Respectfully,  Stephen L. Tvedten

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