Rachel's #927: Breast Cancer and DDT

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At 11:28 AM 10/4/07, you wrote:

>Los Angeles Times, Sept. 30, 2007

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>

>STUDY SUGGESTS DDT, BREAST CANCER LINK

>

>Exposure in childhood is key, quintupling the risk among women with

>high levels of the pesticide, researchers say.

>

>By Marla Cone

>

>Women heavily exposed to the pesticide DDT during childhood are five

>times as likely to develop breast cancer, a new scientific study

>suggests.

>

>For decades, scientists have tried to determine whether there is a

>connection between breast cancer and DDT, the most widely used

>insecticide in history. The UC Berkeley research, based on a small

>number of Bay Area women, tested a theory that the person's age during

>exposure was critical, and provided the first evidence of a

>substantial effect on breast cancer.

>

> " There was very broad exposure to this pesticide, and with this study,

>we have evidence that women exposed when young were the most

>affected, " said Barbara A. Cohn, director of UC Berkeley's Child

>Health and Development Studies, who led the study of 129 women. " If

>this finding holds up, those who were young and more highly exposed

>could be the women at greatest risk. "

>

>Women born between 1945 and 1965 were most likely to have been heavily

>exposed as children to DDT, which was sprayed throughout the United

>States to kill mosquitoes and other insects. DDT use began in 1945,

>peaked in 1959 and was banned nationwide in 1972 because it was

>building up in the environment.

>

> " This does speak to a generation of us, the baby boomer generation, "

>said Peggy Reynolds, an epidemiologist at the Northern California

>Cancer Center and consulting professor at Stanford University School

>of Medicine. She was not involved in the study.

>

> " There's nothing we can do now about the exposures we may have had

>back then, " Reynolds said. " But it's prudent to say that we should be

>mindful of the fact that we may have higher risks by virtue of those

>environmental exposures back then. "

>

>Because the pesticide was ubiquitous, the authors wrote, " the public

>health significance of DDT exposure in early life may be large. "

>

>If the early-exposure theory is true, breast cancer rates could rise

>as the DDT generation ages. Two-thirds of women with invasive breast

>cancer are 55 or older when they are diagnosed, according to the

>American Cancer Society.

>

> " A single study doesn't necessarily translate into truth, if you

>will, " Reynolds said. " But a study like this -- which has such

>dramatic and provocative findings, and is consistent with what we have

>suspected about early life exposures -- does call for careful

>examination of the results. "

>

>Several larger, earlier studies found no evidence that DDT caused

>breast cancer. The largest, a 2002 study involving more than 3,000

>women in Long Island, N.Y., concluded that the breast cancer rate did

>not rise with increasing DDT levels in their blood. To some, that

>seemed to put the question to rest.

>

>However, those studies were based on amounts found in the blood of

>middle-age and older women, after they had contracted cancer and

>decades after DDT was banned.

>

>The new study looked for the first time at DDT concentrations in women

>when they were primarily in their 20s, closer to when their breasts

>developed and during a time of widespread spraying. The UC Berkeley

>team measured DDT in blood collected between 1959 and 1967 from 129

>women who had just given birth in Kaiser Permanente hospitals in the

>Oakland area.

>

>Their study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, will be

>published Monday in the October edition of the journal Environmental

>Health Perspectives.

>

>The women in the top third of DDT concentrations who were exposed

>before age 14 were five times as likely to get breast cancer as the

>women with the lowest levels, according to the study. No relationship

>between cancer and the insecticide was found in the women born before

>1931, who would have been older during any exposure.

>

>The Berkeley study " is very compelling and important and addresses a

>question about timing of exposure that many of the existing studies

>could not address, " said Mary Beth B. Terry, an associate professor of

>epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

>She co-wrote the Long Island study.

>

> " Their findings in general support their hypothesis that the earlier

>you were exposed, the stronger the effect, " Terry said. " We think with

>organochlorines and other exposures, the timing may be more important

>in terms of breast cancer. "

>

>Scientists said the study was particularly important because the blood

>was drawn when DDT was still heavily used, so it offered a snapshot of

>women with levels an order of magnitude higher than today.

>

> " It really turns back the clock in a very unique way, " said Steven

>Stellman, a professor of clinical epidemiology at Columbia University

>who has studied DDT and breast cancer.

>

>A fivefold increase in breast cancer -- 400% -- is considered very

>high. Most traditional risk factors, such as late menopause, obesity

>and older age at first pregnancy, increase risk by 50% to 100%.

>

>However, because relatively few women were involved, the study is

>prone to statistical weakness, which may mean the result is partly

>attributable to chance, Stellman said.

>

>Terry agreed: " Certainly if you have a larger study, the estimates you

>get are more stable. No one study can be definitive. It would be good

>to try to replicate the finding in another population of girls who

>were highly exposed. "

>

>But it is rare to find blood stored for 40 years, so replication would

>be difficult.

>

>Exposure to DDT for the Bay Area women was probably no more extensive

>than elsewhere in the country at the time. Most of the 129 women did

>not live on farms, so they would have been exposed through food or

>urban spraying.

>

>DDT is prohibited today in most of the world, though it is used in

>small volumes in some malaria-plagued African nations.

>

>But virtually everyone on the planet still carries residue because the

>pesticide persists in the environment and in tissues, breaking down

>slowly.

>

>Many environmental toxicologists and epidemiologists have in recent

>years altered their thinking about toxic exposures. They used to focus

>on lifetime exposure. But now they suspect that chemicals may activate

>genes or damage DNA in the womb or during early childhood, resulting

>in diseases decades later.

>

>Other evidence suggests that breast cancer can be triggered early in

>life. In lab animals, prenatal doses of chemicals can trigger

>cancerous cells in fetal mammary glands. Also, Japanese females who

>were younger than 20 in 1945 developed the highest breast cancer rates

>among those exposed to radiation from the atomic bombs.

>

>The new study does not indicate the age of greatest vulnerability to

>exposure. Breast development is most critical in the womb and at

>puberty.

>

>Whether or not DDT promotes breast cancer, there are many other risk

>factors, including alcohol consumption, hormone therapy and age at

>menstruation.

>

>The known risk factors are believed responsible for up to half of

>cases.

>

> " We truly believe it's not one exposure that's going to determine

>whether you get breast cancer or don't get breast cancer, " Reynolds

>said.

>

> " While it's true that our generation may be more at risk from those

>exposures, there are a whole lot of other things involved too. "

>

>marla.cone

>

>Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

 

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At 11:28 AM 10/4/07, you wrote:

>New York Times, Oct. 3, 2007

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>

>OP-ED: PIPE DREAMS

>

>By Robert D. Morris

>

>Seattle, Washington -- In a time when we endlessly scrutinize the

>ingredients of our food and insist on pesticide-free peaches, why are

>we still mixing carcinogens into our children's lemonade? From

>herbicides to arsenic, the Environmental Protection Agency has set

>standards for 80 different chemicals, specifying how much of each

>should be allowed in our drinking water. Yet no regulations exist for

>thousands of other contaminants that make their way into our drinking

>water.

>

>These unregulated contaminants include industrial byproducts,

>agricultural chemicals, drugs and even most of the toxic compounds

>that are formed when we add chlorine for disinfection. The combined

>effect of these contaminants has never been evaluated.

>

>There is nothing we ingest in greater quantities than water. In light

>of this, here's a radical concept. Our drinking water should be water.

>Nothing more. Paradoxically, the best way to make that happen is to

>purify less of it. Here's why.

>

>The technology exists to remove all of these chemicals from our water.

>But the E.P.A. balks at insisting on the elimination of all hazardous

>chemicals and microbes from the 10 trillion gallons of water we use

>every year because the cost would be so great.

>

>Merely maintaining our water systems will cost $274 billion over the

>next 20 years, according to the E.P.A. Upgrading our water supply to

>eliminate all public health risks from chemicals and microbes in our

>drinking water would be far more expensive.

>

>But money is an obstacle to clean drinking water only because the

>E.P.A.'s assumptions rely on old ways of thinking. Our water

>infrastructure is old and decayed, and so are the fundamental ideas

>behind it.

>

>Every drop of water produced by water treatment plants must meet

>E.P.A. standards for drinking-water quality. But we drink less than 1

>percent of that water. Most of it goes down toilets, into washing

>machines, onto our lawns or down the drain.

>

>The largest single consumer of water in most cities is not a consumer

>at all. Water pipes, often more than 100 years old, leak millions of

>gallons per day in every major city in the United States. Because of

>damage from Hurricane Katrina, the water pipes in New Orleans alone

>now leak 50 million gallons each day.

>

>Right now, improving the quality of the water we drink requires

>extraordinary expense to improve the quality of the water we flush.

>This adds enormous costs to any effort to improve the quality of our

>drinking water and forces us to tolerate the presence of chemicals in

>our water that we would ban if they were food additives. It forces New

>Yorkers to drink unfiltered water even though 114 wastewater treatment

>plants dump treated sewage into the city's water supply.

>

>The underlying systems for our water supplies were laid out more than

>100 years ago. Over the past century we have made incremental

>improvements to these systems, adjusting their design and operation as

>new threats to our health were identified. We now have terrific water

>for irrigating lawns and washing cars. Our drinking water, however,

>falls short.

>

>To improve the quality of our drinking water, we need to rethink our

>entire approach to providing it. Our drinking water should have a

>different status from the water used to flush toilets.

>

>Pure water will require filters in restaurants and workplaces and at

>the tap where children fill their glasses. Millions of homes already

>have these filters, but they are installed haphazardly. To avoid a

>two-tiered water supply in which safe water goes only to those who can

>afford it, these filters must become a universal, integral part of the

>water supply system.

>

>Utilities should select, install and maintain point-of-use water

>filters. Design improvements can make the filters more effective.

>These changes are possible and affordable. Americans already spend

>more than $15 billion each year for bottled water.

>

>The need to replace aging pipes and equipment over the next two

>decades offers an opportunity to reinvent the way we deliver our

>drinking water. We cannot allow the water we don't drink to prevent us

>from purifying the water we do.

>

>Robert D. Morris is the author of " The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster

>and the Water We Drink. "

>

>Copyright 2007 The New York Times

 

******

Kraig and Shirley Carroll ... in the woods of SE Kentucky

http://www.thehavens.com/

thehavens

606-376-3363

 

 

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