Politics and Prevention

Linking breast cancer and our environment. Tens of thousands of cases of breast cancer could be prevented in the EU if environmental and occupational factors were recognised as contributary factors in the rising breast cancer epidemic. A report by WECF.

18.01.2008 | Chantal van den Bossche

Is chemical exposure the missing link factor in breast cancer?
Tens of thousands of cases of breast cancer could be prevented in the EU if the cancer establishment recognised environmental and occupational risk factors as a contributory factor in the rising breast cancer epidemic according to a briefing to be published in January 2008.

The briefing from Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) highlights this neglection of the risk factors. WECF focuses in its report on the missing link between breast cancer and the environment. 

Conventionally accepted risk factors only account for 50-70% of breast cancer cases leaving 30% - 50% with no known cause. Mounting evidence points to exposure to environmental contaminants as a major contributor in the rising cases of breast cancer.

The 20 paged publication explores the politics of prevention and asks why primary prevention is being ignored in favour of an unsustainable and costly epidemic. Survival rates continue to fall despite increased spending. Every 6 minutes a woman dies from breast cancer in the EU.

The report will call for an EU strategy on the primary prevention of breast cancer. Copies of the report, embargoed until 00.00 hours 7 January 2008 are available to journalists.

WECF, as the women's organisation on health and the environment, calls on the EU for a strategy on the primary prevention of breast cancer.This publication focuses on the current epidemic of breast cancer which cripples health budgets all over the EU and links it with chemical exposure. What if this epidemic was preventable?

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