Breast cancer is a complex disease caused by multiple environmental and lifestyle factors interacting with genetic susceptibility across the life span. Therefore, environmental factors are of intense interest to both researchers and community members, including women with breast cancer. There is not adequate literature that addresses this issue comprehensively from epidemiological, experimental, and translational research perspective. This book is aiming to fill this gap by gathering chapters from the most recognized experts in the field of breast biology and cancer with special interests in environmental issues.
Breast cancer remains the most common invasive cancer among women. The primary patients of breast cancer are adult women who are approaching or have reached menopause; 90 percent of new cases in U.S. women in 2009 were diagnosed at age 45 or older. Growing knowledge of the complexity of breast cancer stimulated a transition in breast cancer research toward elucidating how external factors may influence the etiology of breast cancer. Breast Cancer and the Environment reviews the current evidence on a selection of environmental risk factors for breast cancer, considers gene-environment interactions in breast cancer, and explores evidence-based actions that might reduce the risk of breast cancer. The book also recommends further integrative research into the elements of the biology of breast development and carcinogenesis, including the influence of exposure to a variety of environmental factors during potential windows of susceptibility during the full life course, potential interventions to reduce risk, and better tools for assessing the carcinogenicity of environmental factors. For a limited set of risk factors, evidence suggests that action can be taken in ways that may reduce risk for breast cancer for many women: avoiding unnecessary medical radiation throughout life, avoiding the use of some forms of postmenopausal hormone therapy, avoiding smoking, limiting alcohol consumption, increasing physical activity, and minimizing weight gain. Breast Cancer and the Environment sets a direction and a focus for future research efforts. The book will be of special interest to medical researchers, patient advocacy groups, and public health professionals.
Throughout their lives, women have experiences and make decisions that can influence their chances of getting breast cancer. While we have little control over some of these risk factors, we can sometimes make choices - good or bad - that affect our risk of getting breast cancer. In a 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, obesity, alcohol consumptions, and some medical treatments were found to raise these risks at least a little. For other factors, the evidence wasn\'t as clear. Look through this question and answer booklet to learn more.
The Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine wanted to address the link between environmental factors and the development of cancer in light of recent advances in genomics. They asked what research tools are needed, how new scientific information can be applied in a timely manner to reduce the burden of cancer, and how this can be flexible enough to treat the individual.
The large and increasing burden of breast cancer demands innovative research and bold new approaches to uncover the intricate combination of factors inside and outside the body that lead to the disease. Based on our review of the state of the science, current programs and investments by federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations, and relevant communication efforts and policies, the IBCERCC offers seven recommendations to highlight the urgent need for coordinated, targeted efforts to identify and mitigate the environmental causes of breast cancer.
Published more than three decades after Rachel Carson's Silent Spring warned of the impact of chemicals on the environment, this book offers a critique of current thinking on cancer and its causes. It argues that the evidence has been wilfully ignored, and that the environment is still being poisoned. Throughout her study, the author weaves two stories - of Rachel Carson and her battle to be heard and of her own cancer of the bladder, which she traces back to agricultural and industrial contamination.
