Nevertheless, federal funding is in short supply, and there is always the risk it will run out for the Oakland group. Research now is turning to the second and third generations -- the daughters and granddaughters of the original study members. Just like she did with their mothers and grandmothers, Cohn will look for patterns of exposure and disease as they age.
Like a treasure trove about to be unlocked, Cohn said these generations of women “hold the key to understanding” breast cancer.
This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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4 Comments
Add CommentIt's crazy that we're basically running an uncontrolled experiment on all these pollutants and their interaction with our bodies. The people who profited from the use of these chemicals took those profits decades ago and the cumulative damages have been accruing to society as a whole ever since.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndustry devises 100s of new chemicals every year and it is impossible to do long-term studies on their effects before they're put into widespread use. We should AT LEAST make sure that chemicals that would tend to get taken in by the body, like the BPA in steel can liners or the flame retardants in seat cushions, would get the targeted scrutiny required to make sure they are safe.
We also need to ensure that these chemicals don't persist and spread to contaminate other areas. The "Superfund" has been depleted since 2003 and the remaining balance has come from general revenues in he USA, i.e., adding to the deficit because the polluting industries can't pay:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfund#Implementation
We should AT LEAST get it fully-funded again and get EVERY site on the road to decontamination ASAP.
There is a recent article in the Wall Street Journal titled: "No ill effect found in human BPA exposure" by Robert Lee Hotz. Says the exposure levels are thousands of times too low to affect the human body. and concludes: "The World Health Organization, the European Food Safety Authority, and Japan's National Institutes of Advanced Industrial Sciene and Technology have all dicounted its risk to human health."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a hunch that the widespread introduction of chemicals into our lives has lead to more than just increases in breast cancer. Unfortunately serious studies can take years to develop and produce results.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDecades ago I read a novel by Doris Lessing in which she said something like this, that we'd given ourselves cancer by producing all sorts of new chemicals which had poisoned us. At first I thought 'how ridiculous' and then the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' had pointed out a similar thing for birds and other species.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's interesting that at last the evidence is mounting up - it may take years for cancers to show themselves, so it's tough for epidemiologists to work out the possible factors involved.