EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND: The study released in the journal Environmental Health found a statistically significant association between the increased risk of breast cancer among women who work in jobs where they are exposed to a ‘toxic soup’ of chemicals. The study was conducted jointly by HealthyStuff.org and the National Network on the Environments and Women’s Health (Canada). Researchers were from Canada, US and UK, including four from the Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group (OEHRG) at the University of Stirling in Scotland.
The case control study, involving 1005 women with breast cancer and 1147 without the disease, revealed that women who worked in jobs classified as highly exposed for 10 years increased their breast cancer risk by 42 per cent. The study was lead by Dr James Brophy and Dr Margaret Keith, lead researchers, both work in the OEHRG at Stirling as well as the University of Windsor in Ontario.
“Breast cancer incidence rose throughout the developed world in the second half of the twentieth century as women entered industrial workplaces and many new and untested chemicals were being introduced. Diverse and concentrated exposures to carcinogens and hormone disrupting chemicals in some workplaces can put workers at an increased risk for developing cancer,” said Dr Keith.
Amoung the occupation with the highest risk were plastic manufacturing. The risk of developing breast cancer doubles for women working in the Canadian car industry’s plastics manufacturing sector; and among those who were premenopausal, the risk was almost five times as great. Many plastics have been found to release estrogenic and carcinogenic chemicals and cumulative exposures to mixtures of these chemicals are a significant concern.
“Consumers are exposed daily to the same toxic soup of chemicals that workers are, and we are greatly concerned that government standards are not enough to protect us from carcinogens and endocrine disrupting chemicals in plastics and vehicles,” said Jeff Gearhart, Lead Researcher at HealthyStuff.org.
“The study also points to the need to re-evaluate occupational and environmental exposure standards, keeping in mind that there may be no determinable safe levels to cancer-causing or hormone-disrupting chemicals,” said Dr Keith.
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