Thursday 17 July 1997
 Michael Lea, The Kingston Whig-Standard / Nature may be biting back, warns Devra Lee Davis, an environmental health scientist and director of the Health, Environment and Development Program at the World Resources Institute, during the World Conference on Breast Cancer in Kingston yesterday. |
That was the message cancer researchers delivered to delegates at the World Conference on Breast Cancer in Kingston yesterday, and it was a message that has been a common thread throughout the conference.
"We cannot afford to wait because the science will always be uncertain," said Devra Lee Davis, an environmental health scientist and director of the Health, Environment and Development Program at the World Resources Institute. "There has been a misconception lately, in the media especially, that the science is uncertain so we should do nothing.
"Doing nothing means you are putting people at risk and we need to act now based on precautionary principles."
Other researchers agreed that women should not ignore evidence that points to the role environmental pollutants, toxins and chemicals can play in the growth of cancer.
"I think that we have a moral imperative to act in the face of good and partial evidence" said Sandra Steingraber, a biologist who researched environmental links to human cancers in her recent book, Living Downstream.
While some breast cancer cases can be attributed to hereditary factors, Ms. Davis pointed out that most women never know what caused their disease.
"The first thing that is important for all of us to realize is that only one out of 10 cases of breast cancer, at most, arises in a woman with a defect in her genes," she said. "This means that in the majority of cases where breast cancer occurs, (it is) because of something that happened to a woman after she is born, causing her genes to be damaged and breast cancer to arise."
Ms. Davis pointed to several studies that appear to show strong connections between environmental factors and cancer. In one, conducted by the health department of New York state, women who lived near two or three chemical plants were found to have three or four times the risk of breast cancer. The rate of cancer in women who had lived in these areas for 40 years was four times the rate in women who had only been near the plants for 10 years.
She also discussed animal studies that showed an increase in cancers and birth defects when environmental pollutants were present.
"We have a disease that is the most common disease for women in developed countries and increasing rapidly in developing countries," she said. "We have got to do a better job of figuring out how to reduce our risks based on evidence from animals I rather than making ourselves the laboratory rats on this earth."
Rosalie Bertell, a Canadian radiation biologist and public health advocate, said atmospheric damage from nuclear testing after the Second World War has played havoc with the health of some baby boomers in areas including the south Pacific, parts of Europe and the U.S. West Coast.
Ms. Steingraber said the impact of environmental factors must become the focus of global attention.
"Women in Canada have, in their breasts, solvents and pesticides that were sprayed in countries farther south than you," she said, explaining that the chemicals evaporate and are carried north by the jet stream.
"They came down and they found their way into the food system," she said. "You, here in Canada, are linked to people hundreds of thousands of miles away from you."
But the problem is not limited to international policies.
Ms. Davis said many dangerous chemicals are found inside our homes. She said some household cleansers, detergents and chemicals are "more toxic than (people) are aware" and encouraged delegates to buy "green" products whenever possible. She also argued that governments must implement new tax policies to make it more affordable for consumers to be environmentally friendly.
"Materials should be taxed according to how much damage they cause and those taxes would mean that it would cost more money to buy a product that is poisoning the environment," she said.
As the final day of workshops drew to a close, delegates resolved to lobby governments to pay more attention to the threat of environmental pollutants and to call for a ban on the production of pesticides by 2000.
"It takes more than global agreements," said Charlotte Brody, a delegate from the U.S.
"It takes activism."
The conference will end today with an international hearing where delegates, speakers and public officials and legislators from around the world will gather to "promote world action to eradicate breast cancer."
Copyright 1997 The Ottawa Citizen