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June 1, 2000
Breast Cancer: Cause and Controversy
Toxic Threat?
No evidence exists to clearly link breast cancer with chemical exposures in the U.S. population as a whole, and the same goes for Marin County.
The most definitive studies yet attempted are underway on Long Island, thanks to a congressional mandate and $26 million for 10 population-based studies of high cancer incidence in New York suburbs.
Elsewhere, a recent study of lifestyle factors and cancer by the Silent Spring Institute in Massachusetts (silentspring.org/) found a correlation with only two environmental factors -- lawn chemical use and dry cleaning -- but the results were hardly definitive.
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I dont know what they're spraying on the lawns. And if it's a windy day and I'm breathing that in, is that bad for me? I don't know." | |
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Lifestyle changes
"We have a lot of landfills here. We want to know what's in those landfills," Levien said. "The military used this area heavily at one time. They dumped a lot of toxins. We definitely want to know where they dumped what."
She advocates a halt to development, full-scale promotion of organic diets, dramatic cuts in pesticide use and less constant use of cell phones, since even those have been tagged as potentially dangerous (guardianunlimited.co.uk/), albeit usually for brain cancer from using high-powered, older models rather than the digital phones favored in the Bay Area these days.
Levien has tacked up a big wall map of the county at the Cancer Watch offices, making the low-key commercial space just off Highway 101 look like a political campaign headquarters. Citizens are being asked to contact the organization about any toxic dumps, industrial polluters or other possible hot spots that even conceivably could have something to do with high cancer rates in Marin.
Multicolored pushpins, each denoting a suspected hot spot, are steadily multiplying as calls come trickling in and volunteers offer their own suspicions. Some are obvious: Navy installations in Marin City. Transmitters atop Mount Tamalpais. All that car exhaust along Highway 101.
Others are harder to pin down: Could there be toxins in the coastal fog from offshore dumping? Are dangerous herbicides being sprayed on Marin golf courses? Is there something in the water? What about household chemicals?
Dr. Angela Prehn, an epidemiologist with the Northern California Cancer Center, noted that the major problem with linking chemical exposures for breast cancer is that even the most common chemicals remain untested as risk factors in humans.
Unknown exposure
"Should I have been measuring my exposure [to chemicals] when I was a kid? Do I measure my exposure in my house now? How many bottles of Raid I go through? ... there's a billion different products they could be in. A lot of times you're exposed to these sorts of environmental exposures and we don't even know it. I mean, at work here they spray the lawns. And I don't know what they're spraying on the lawns. And if it's a windy day and I'm breathing that in, is that bad for me? I don't know."
Activists and cancer survivors insist that this lack of knowledge can hurt us.
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"It was a total shock," she said. "It was found on a mammogram. I was sure they had made a mistake."
She finished chemotherapy last June and looks forward to completing surgical reconstruction by the end of summer 2000.
"I felt like I did everything right," she said, adding that most of the other breast-cancer patients she encounters seem to be much like her, "young, healthy active women who have no history of this disease in their family, and who are totally not expecting this to happen to them."
Next: Statistical Significance
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Breast Cancer: CAUSE & CONTROVERSY by Carl Hall photographs by Pico  SIDEBARS: Photo Gallery: Breast cancer survivors carry on. (Pico) Long Island: A mammoth research effort and its critics. (Hall) Risk factors offer questions and answers. (Wilson)
Toxic Links: How do we know if a chemical is dangerous? (Wilson)
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