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Posted By BCC Admin, On August 1st, 2013

A column on Breast Cancer Fund’s work on breast cancer and the environment. By Jeanne Rizzo, Huffington Post.

Jeanne Rizzo, president and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund, has helped the organization to build an impressive track record of advocating for public policy and business practices to ensure safer products and reduce exposures to toxic chemicals and radiation linked to breast cancer. She is past chair of the California Breast Cancer Research Council and is a steering-committee member of the program’s Prevention Initiative. She is also an appointed member of the National Institutes of Health’s Interagency Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Coordinating Committee.

In 2010, Jeanne Rizzo started a column on Huffington Post about the need for breast cancer advocates to acknowledge, and take on, environment risks. Read her collection below.

Will the War on Cancer Evolve to Take on Environmental Risks? May 6, 2010

After 40 years of war on cancer, this year more than half a million Americans are expected to die from cancer – about 1,500 a day – and nearly 1.5 million new cases will be diagnosed. That doesn’t sound like success on the battlefield. But today, with the release of the President’s Cancer Panel report Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, we may see a fundamental shift toward a winning strategy. Read Post

It’s Time for Breast Cancer Prevention Month October 12, 2010

It’s that pink time of year again, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But when virtually every American has been touched by the disease, who among us is not aware of breast cancer? What we need is Breast Cancer PREVENTION Month, and a focus on identifying and eliminating the preventable causes of the disease so fewer people ever have to receive that life-changingdiagnosis. What we need is a national breast cancer prevention plan. Read Post

When Will FDA Stop Dragging Its Feet on BPA? April 4, 2012

Late last Friday afternoon, on the eve of its legal deadline and at probably the best possible time to avoid media scrutiny, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it has rejected the 2008 Natural Resources Defense Council petition requesting that the toxic chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, be declared unsafe and banned from food packaging. The body of evidence against BPA has been mounting over the years we’ve been calling on the FDA to make a definitive determination on BPA’s safety. Most of us are exposed to BPA every day. Read Post

Now Undeniable: Breast Cancer That Comes With the Job November 26, 2012

Rizzo discusses a groundbreaking study of one thousand women with breast cancer in neighboring communities of southern Ontario who work in a variety of occupations including plastics manufacturing and automotive plants. The study finds that women who work in plastics and food-canning have a staggering fivefold increase in pre-menopausal breast cancer. They are exposed to endocrine-disrupting compounds — including phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA) and flame retardants — that lab studies have shown to cause mammary gland changes and tumors. Read Post

Welcome to the Breast Cancer Prevention Era? February 13, 2013

With the release of a groundbreaking federal advisory report today, there’s hope that we’re entering a breast cancer prevention era — one in which my young granddaughters won’t remember a time when the chemical industry got away with its story that breast cancer isn’t linked to chemical exposures, and when the only focus on prevention was on personal behavior.  The report, “Breast Cancer and the Environment: Prioritizing Prevention,” chronicles the science showing that environmental factors like toxic chemical exposure increase breast cancer risk, and finds that focusing on identifying and eliminating these factors presents the greatest opportunity to prevent breast cancer. It calls for a national breast cancer prevention strategy. Read Post

It’s Way Past Time to Overhaul Our Broken Federal Chemical Law June 18, 2013

If you’re like many Americans, when you’re buying a garden hose or glass cleaner or a couch, you assume there are laws on the books to ensure that the chemicals used to make these products are safe for human exposure. The alarming truth is that the 37-year-old law that is supposed to protect us from toxic industrial chemicals–the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)–is so broken that our government hasn’t even been able to ban asbestos, a well-established human carcinogen. Read Post

Reset the Clock on Cancer: Tell the Senate to Fix Our Chemical Laws August 1, 2013

Toxic chemicals, found in everything from cleaners to furniture to plastics, endlessly bombard our bodies and take a toll on our health. A strong and rapidly growing consensus from the scientific community has determined that chemicals in everyday products are linked to diseases and disorders that persist or are on the rise in the population, including breast cancer, infertility, asthma and more.  Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., convened a full-day hearing with experts in public health about the failure of the law governing chemicals, the Toxic Substances Control Act, (TSCA), which stems from a number of factors, including the very basic flaw that chemicals don’t have to be proven safe first before they are brought to market.

Read Post

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