Industrial Toxins Increase Risk of Breast Cancer

In a small town in central Ohio 7 women living within 3 blocks of each other are fighting breast cancer. A friend's granddaughter has leukemia. Two brothers are battling prostate cancer. A neighbor had surgery for thyroid cancer. Everyone you talk to in this town has a family member or friend coping with cancer or its aftermath. What is the common denominator? A shuttered chemical factory squats at one end of town, not far from the hospital. For decades it belched poisons into the air from its multiple smokestacks. Now mountains of chemical sludge fill its vacant parking lots, oozing rivulets of noxious liquid into the soil and ground water. The people in this town don't stand a chance.

As breast cancer incidence rises at a rate of 1.3% annually in the U.S. and Canada, researchers have found that women with the highest levels of the industrial toxins DDE and PCBs in their fat, tissues, and blood were 2-3 times more likely to develop cancer, according to the Canadian Medical Association Journal (April 1996).

The Environmental Protection Agency has identified at least 55 pesticides that could leave carcinogenic residues in foods. In a single meal, a person can conceivably consume residues of a dozen different neurotoxic or carcinogenic chemicals, from salad to wine, main dish to dessert. The EPA has been woefully inadequate in protecting the public. When calculating permitted residue levels of a given compound, the EPA does not take into consideration individuals' repeated exposure to the same pesticide. Nor does it factor in the chemical cocktail syndrome, the exposure to multiple chemicals, for which it has no scientifically acceptable testing method. Yet studies of multiple chemical exposure have shown that chemicals act synergistically, that is, enhancing one another's effects.

In a classic study, a scientific team tested 3 chemicals on a group of rats, applying one at a time; no ill effects were observed. When they combined and administered 2 at a time, a decline in health was noted and when 3 chemicals were given at once, the rats died within 2 weeks.

The potential of pesticides and other chemicals Americans commonly encounter in their daily lives, alone and in combination, to cause and promote cancer should be of grave concern to all physicians and public health officials. I provide a detailed and thorough discussion of this alarming problem and how you can protect yourself and your family in my book An Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide to Cancer. You also may want to consult my video, Cancer Conquest, which provides information on the latest techniques being used to fight cancer, as well as interviews with the nation's top alternative medicine experts. Click the post title to reach my website for more information.