CANCER CAUSES: The true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated, according to the President's Cancer Panel.
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The President's Cancer Panel on Thursday reported that "the true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated" and strongly urged action to reduce people's widespread exposure to carcinogens.
The panel advised President Obama "to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."
The 240-page report by the President's Cancer Panel is the first to focus on environmental causes of cancer. The panel, created by an act of Congress in 1971, is charged with monitoring the multi-billion-dollar National Cancer Program and reports directly to the President every year.
Environmental exposures "do not represent a new front in the ongoing war on cancer. However, the grievous harm from this group of carcinogens has not been addressed adequately by the National Cancer Program," the panel said in its letter to Obama that precedes the report. "The American people – even before they are born – are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures."
The panel, appointed by President Bush, told President Obama that the federal government is missing the chance to protect people from cancer by reducing their exposure to carcinogens. In its letter, the panel singled out bisphenol A, a chemical used in polycarbonate plastic and can linings that is unregulated in the United States, as well as radon, formaldehyde and benzene.
Environmental health scientists were pleased by the findings, saying it embraces everything that they have been saying for years.
Richard Clapp, a professor of environmental health at Boston University's School of Public Health and one of the nation's leading cancer epidemiologists, called the report "a call to action."
Environmental and occupational exposures contribute to "tens of thousands of cancer cases a year," Clapp said. "If we had any calamity that produced tens of thousands of deaths or serious diseases, that’s a national emergency in my view.”
The two-member panel – Dr. LaSalle D. Lefall, Jr., a professor of surgery at Howard University and Margaret Kripke, a professor at University of Texas' M.D. Anderson Cancer Center – was appointed by President Bush to three-year terms.
Lefall and Kripke concluded that action is necessary, even though in many cases there is scientific uncertainty about whether certain chemicals cause cancer. That philosophy, called the precautionary principle, is highly controversial among scientists, regulators and industry.
"The increasing number of known or suspected environmental carcinogens compels us to action, even though we may currently lack irrefutable proof of harm," Lefall, who is chair of the panel, said in a statement.
The two panelists met with nearly 50 medical experts in late 2008 and early 2009 before writing their report to the president. Cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong previously served on the panel, but did not work on this year's report.
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14 Comments
Add CommentBut - won't that affect profits?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn Australia our New South Wales government has just dismissed cancer and pulmonary disease claims resulting from large open cut coal mines surrounding small towns north of Sydney as a statistical abnormality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn Australia the people are immune to environmental pollution, as a matter of fact no one dies of cancer or pulmonary disease in Australia, please consult our American born premier so you too can have a Cancer free nation.
cool article in that i never new that ct scan were much worst than an xray....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisscientific earthling - I presume many of those living in those small towns had to be disqualified as non-representative samples because they spent their lives working in the mines?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving investigated basil cell carcinomas, it'll be interesting to see how the premier wins legislative control over the Sun.
Well according to Harrisons Textbook of medicine-no adequate
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisprevention strategy maybe tailored if inadequate
income/occupational-housing & basic living conditions are
assured...
In case those do exist as far as I know the first
prevention factor to tackle is cigarette smoking..
Well educated Doctors have never forget cancers can be caused by the environment, it's obvious !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have heard this alarm raised with great regularity over the past 50 years. To correct the author; a patient of mine is a subject in the Agent Orange study being conducted on Viet Nam vets. As a study subject, he is provided the data for the study group on a yearly basis. When adjusted for all other risks there are no diseases occurring at any higher rate than expected. What everyone overlooks is, as a group, these people had higher risk lifestyles including, tobacco use, alcohol, recreational drugs, etc that do raise the risks of disease but no more than for the population at large.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt it long past due for the scientific community to accept that chronic inflammation is far more of a risk for mutagenisis and carcinoma than anything else. You, the patient control these risks. Collectively as a population we all want to eat wrong, drink wrong, sleep wrong, inject unknown substances into our bodies, all in the name of a good time and then blame some innocuous agent in the environment as the problem when the accumulation of damage from our choices catch up with us. From asbestos to Alar and bisphenol, your choices are far more important than what you encounter in the environment.
@ssm1959 -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"blame some innocuous agent"
Where is the proof that any of the 300 chemicals in an umbilical cord are innocuous? Do you work for a chemical company?
ssm1959 - As a Viet Nam vet, I can only say that I'm certainly glad that you're not my doctor, since you seem to believe that those of us who were subjected to the conditions of that war are solely responsible for all subsequent lifestyle 'choices'. Unfortunately, having successfully survived that experience, most of us were not in the position of, for example a physician, to freely chose our own lifestyle from a broad spectrum of opportunities. I am sure that you are fully responsible for your attitude towards your patients.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjtdwyer:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry mate, these are all new mines catering to the Chinese and Indian boom demand for coal. Most of those effected are long term residents of the areas, mainly children and the elderly (I guess its all right to eliminate this group-our premier is young).
Most mining crews are fly-in fly-out plus we have a lot of overseas "temporary work-visa" workers, cheaper for the big money people.
By the way the mining industry is automated to the point it employs very few for the output it generates.
We do have a problem with skin cancers, its more to do with a thin ozone layer and fair skinned population seeking to get brown.
Our premier (state government) can do little about that, she has no control over immigration policy (a central government issue) but the central government headed by the prime minister can legislate for darker skinned immigrants on health grounds.
Now you know a little of how British style governments work or don't work.
scientific earthling - Thank you for clarifying - that is very enlightening. I admit I was being facetious, presuming those small towns were full of old mine workers. I'm most sorry to hear about the problem with children, perhaps indicating susceptibility to increased inhalation of coal dust while running about?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI personally experimented unsuccessfully with unapproved local Interferon injections to treat advanced BCCs before submitting to excision & reconstruction, and found most research had been done in Australia. It was worth a shot, so to speak... The BCCs ignored my being a black haired Irishman; I also had cataracts at 40 & 45 years.
Wherever I've been, I've found all governments to be most effective when working towards their own self-interests, most dangerous when addressing public interests. Good luck with yours!
The medical profession has really dropped the ball here. They could have been advocates for the patients. Instead they are accomplices. The factory in my town pumps out solvents such as toluene into the air. Many people living near it get crippling headaches. The doctors give them pain killers and send them on their way. There is even a daycare nearby. Nobody dares challenge The Company. Doctors have gotten too comfortable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's about time that people are acknowledging that there is a correlation between carcinogens in the environment and cancer. Finally. My mother contracted lymphoma, uterine cancer, and a brain tumor, after living within 2 miles of a landfill. My father had testicular cancer. Neighbors within a 3 mile radius died of cancer . Brain tumors, ovarian cancer, to name a few. Not only is there something in the water supply, its in the air as well. Just take a whiff sometime when you are passing a landfill, don't stop to smell the methane.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had the good fortune to study human genetics at one of the best programs in the country. The combined opinions of the faculty were that chemical fears are grossly overestimated in part due to the models with which they are investigated. Most of you have no issue drinking the equivalent of 1.5liters of wine in a year. Yet that very normal act carries the equivalent risk for carcinoma as ingesting a lifetime of water containing the highest level of pesticides allowed by the EPA. The problem with being human is that we always inflate distant risks and ignore proximal ones. Lets face it, this weekend, some of you will get behind the wheel after ingesting mind altering drugs(including alcohol) because you can handle it. Yet you worry and in some cases obsess about a debatable statistical risk that might have an effect decades in the future. Even the American Cancer Institute challenged the conclusion of the administrations statement.
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