What's causing cancer?

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Jun. 13, 2005. 01:00 AM

Toronto Star - Editorial

http://snipurl.com/fk2k

 

What's causing cancer?

Chemicals fingered as rates reach epidemic proportions, by Mitchell Anderson

 

Cancer in Canada is now projected to afflict one in every 2.2 men and

one in every 2.6 women in their lifetime. In the 1930s, those numbers

were less that one in 10. What's happening? Why are we now seeing what

many are calling a " cancer epidemic " ?

 

Some would suggest we are simply an aging population and cancer is a

disease of the old. Not true. Recent statistics show that the net

incidence rate of cancer has increased 25 per cent for males and 20 per

cent for females from 1974 to 2005 — after correcting for the effects of

aging.

 

Children are increasingly the victims. Researchers in Britain have shown

that certain childhood cancers such as leukemia and brain cancer have

increased by more than a third since the 1950s.

 

In Canada, hundreds of millions of dollars are raised and spent for

cancer research and treatment. The elephant in the room, however, is the

contribution of environmental toxins and whether many of the cancers

striking Canadians can be avoided rather than simply managed.

 

The World Health Organization estimates that fully 25 per cent of

cancers worldwide are caused by occupational and environmental factors

other than smoking. You don't have to look far for some potential

chemical culprits.

 

There are more than 85,000 chemicals that are currently licensed for use

in North America. Less than half have ever been tested for human health

risk and even fewer for potential environmental impacts.

 

The U.S. Centers For Disease Control recently turned their attention

toward pollution detection — not in the environment, but within the

human body. Their study in 2002 found the presence of 81 different toxic

chemicals, including PCBs, benzene and other carcinogens in their

sampling of 2,500 people tested.

 

It is somewhat of a no-brainer that reducing exposure to known

carcinogens will reduce the risk of developing cancer. Surprisingly,

this simple logic seems to have been lost on our federal government.

Many chemicals that are scientifically demonstrated carcinogens or

otherwise toxic are freely used here without any legal obligation to

identify them on the label. Some of these same chemicals are entirely

banned elsewhere. A trip to your local supermarket reveals a small

sample of these hidden poisons:

 

Mothballs contain either naphthalene or paradichlorobenzene, both of

which are carcinogenic. A recent U.S. study linked mothball use to an

increased incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Polycarbonate plastics

used in food-grade plastic containers such as water bottles can leach

Bisphenol A, an estrogen-mimicking chemical linked to a variety of

disorders, including hormone-related birth defects, learning

disabilities, prostate cancer and neuro-degenerative diseases such as

Alzheimer's disease.

 

Several leading perfumes, nail polishes and other cosmetic products sold

in Canada contain the endocrine-disrupting phthalates DBP and DEHP —

both banned for use in cosmetic products in European Union countries.

 

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs are common chemical fire

retardants found in everything from foam mattresses to computer parts.

They have similar properties to the now outlawed PCBs and are known

neurotoxins and hormone disrupters. The most dangerous forms are now

banned in the EU, though they remain legal here in Canada.

 

Many leading brands of household laundry detergent contain trisodium

nitrilotriacetate, another suspected carcinogen as well as an

environmental pollutant.

 

Chemicals that endanger human life also go down the drain and impact the

environment. A gruesome example involved a dead orca that washed up

south of Vancouver in 2000 that was so contaminated with persistent

chemicals that Ottawa considered shipping the carcass to the Swan Hills

toxic waste facility for incineration.

 

Like orcas, we are perched at the top of the food chain and are becoming

the unwitting receptacles of many of the chemicals designed to make our

lives more convenient.

 

Ballooning cancer rates are simply not worth whiter clothes or fewer moths.

 

Cancer must be fought on many fronts. Research and treatment are

undeniably important but so is environmental cancer prevention. It is

therefore shocking that our government is not moving faster to ban known

and suspected carcinogens, and requiring mandatory " right to know "

labelling so that Canadians can better protect themselves and their

families.

 

Anything less is quite simply putting the interests of the chemical

industry ahead of human life.

 

Mitchell Anderson is a board member of the Labour Environmental Alliance

Society, a Vancouver-based charity that educates the public on cancer

prevention.