Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment

This article looks at increasing cancer rates and their links with the environment. Sandra Steingraber emphasizes that cancer research is far to focused on the genetics rather than the environment that an individual is brought up in. "What runs in families does not necessarily run in blood. And our genes are less an inherited set of teacups enclosed in a cellular china cabinet then they are plates used in a busy diner. Cracks, chips, and scrapes accumulate accidents happen." She delves into her own personal family history of how in the year 1974 marked a monumental year in breast cancer cases. "My mother was first diagnosed in 1974, a year that is considered an anomaly in the annals of breast cancer. Graphs displaying U.S. breast cancer incidence rates across the decades show a gently rising line that suddenly zooms skyward, falls back then continues its slow ascent. The story behind the blip of '74 has been deemed a textbook lesson in statistical artifacts. In this year, First Lady Betty Ford and Second Lady Happy Rockefeller both underwent mastectomies. The words breast cancer entered public conversation. Women who might otherwise have delayed routine checkups or might otherwise have delayed routine checkups or who were hesitant to seek medical opinion about a lump were propelled into doctors' offices. The result was that a lot of women were diagnosed with breast cancer within a short period of time, my mother among them." She talks about how scientist are starting to realize how people lacking certain gene sequences are susceptible to different cancers but it is the combination's of the sequences that seem to give a better idea of the different factors contribute to the extent and the chance of it occurring. "What my various file folders do not contain is a considered evaluation of all known and suspected bladder carcinogens-their sources, their possible interactions with each other, their possible interactions with each other, and our various routes of exposure to them... Several obstacles, I believe prevent us from addressing cancer's environmental roots. An obsession with genes and heredity is one." Her she sums up her argument that environments contributes more than most researchers are lead to believe. A shift in focus is needed. Suppose we assume for a moment that the most conservative estimate concerning the proportion of cancer deaths due to environmental causes is absolutely accurate. This estimate, put forth by those who dismiss environmental carcinogens as negligible, is 2 percent. Though others have placed this number far higher, let's assume for the sake of argument that this lowest value is absolutely correct. 2 percent means that 10,940 people in the United States die each year from environmentally caused cancers... It is the annual equivalent of wiping out a small city. It is thirty funerals every day."

Citations:
Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment
by Sandra Steingraber

Picture:
http://www.ewg.org/