Breast Cancer , EMF’s and Chemicals
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. It
strikes 182,000 women annually in America alone, and of
those, 46,000 will die. Over the last fifty years, the
incidence of breast cancer has risen steadily, on average by
2 percent a year in most industrialized countries. In
America alone, from 1973 to 1988, the rate rose 26 percent.
It is now said that American women have a one-in-eight
chance of developing the disease sometime during their
lives, with three-quarters of the cases occurring in
postmenopausal women. But more and more young women are also
contracting breast cancer.
Although many of our health organizations continue to
advo¬cate early detection as a first line of defense, in
fact, despite our efforts in that direction, with the
fine-tuning of mammography machines and the millions who
have regular scans, the mortality rate for breast cancer has
remained virtually the same since the 1930s. There is
apparently a statistical fluke inherent in the
early-detection programs. Finding the disease earlier makes
it look as if more women are surviving longer, but in
reality they may only be entering the statistical pool that
much sooner.
The causes of breast cancer (of which there are about
thir¬teen forms, some more pernicious than others) are
unknown, but there are some likely new suspects.
One is a group of man-made chemicals called organocholines,
used largely in the manufacture of polyvinyl chloride (PVC)
plastics, as well as in bleaching prod¬ucts, disinfecting
agents, dry-cleaning solutions, fireproofing, and
refrigeration and in such pesticides as atrazine, DDT, and
DDE (a DDT breakdown product). Chemical by-products of
manufacturing such as dioxin, PCBs, and PBBs are also
organo¬cholines. These chemicals are long lasting in the
environment, including within the human body. Some 177
different organo¬cholines have been found in human body
fluids and tissue. In 1992, Dr. Frank Falck, at the
University of Connecticut School of Medicine, reported that
in tissue samples from forty women who had undergone
biopsies for breast lumps, the samples found to be cancerous
had high levels of PCBs, DDT, and DDE.
It is thought that organocholines contribute to cancer in
two ways: by direct mutagenic effects and by mimicking or
disrupting natural hormones, especially estrogen. DDT, DDE,
and PCBs are all xenoestrogens — false estrogens that bind
to a cell's estrogen-receptor sites. The body does not rid
itself of xenoestrogens in the same way as it does natural
estrogens. Dangerous types of estrogens build up in fatty
tissue like that of the breast. The higher up the food chain
one goes, the more concentrated be¬come the organocholines.
Animal tissues and those of large oily fish (like bluefish)
have high concentrations. Moreover, organo¬cholines are
thought to be complete carcinogens, that is, they can both
create and promote cancer. This means that they may be
responsible for cancers in women who are considered low
risk. Still, something else is needed to set the whole
process in motion, and that co-factor may be electromagnetic
fields.
A possible association between breast cancer—in both women
and men — and EMFs keeps coming up. As of this writ¬ing,
five studies have now found an increase in breast cancer in
men who are occupationally exposed to EMFs. The first study
was conducted in 1989 by Dr. Genevieve Mantanowski and
co¬workers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene
and Public Health. They found an increase in male breast
cancer among young telephone-company workers. Since then,
four other studies have found similar increases in male
breast cancer among those occupationally exposed to EMFs. In
1992, Dr. Dana Loomis, at the University of North Carolina,
found a doubling of breast cancer deaths among male
electrical workers under the age of sixty-five. Before that,
Dr. Paul Demers and colleagues, at the Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Besearch Center in Seattle, reported a sixfold risk
increase in some younger electrical work¬ers, and Drs. Tore
Tynes and Aage Andersen, of the Cancer Begistry of Norway in
Oslo, reported a doubling of risks in electrical-transport
workers such as train operators.
Breast cancer in men is extremely rare, and any such
increase in a select population with a specific occupational
exposure to EMFs has important implications for the general
female popu¬lation. The physiological link between EMFs and
breast cancer (as well as other glandular cancers, like
prostate cancer and lymphoma) may be through the suppression
of melatonin pro¬duced by the pineal gland in the brain.
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