In her award-winning documentary Toxic Bust, filmmaker Megan Siler takes on the issues and realities of toxic chemicals women are exposed to at home, in the community, and during work in relation to the potential links to breast cancer. Siler focuses on three breast cancer hot spots -- San Francisco and Silicon Valley in California and Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

Siler is not alone in her investigative work of environmental links to cancer risks. Even though the current percentage of federally-funded research dollars allocated to the links between cancer and exposure to environmental toxins is in the single-digits, there are those who have spent a good deal of time, energy and resources into studying the cause and effect of the environmental risks to cancer. In the last six years, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has conducted extensive studies regarding toxic chemicals in the environment. Among the 72 people who participated in the EWG studies, a chemical body burden of 455 industrial pollutants, pesticides and other chemicals in blood, urine, and breast milk were found.

The Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition analyzed the hair, blood, and urine samples of ten study participants and found that every person tested had at least 26 and as many as 39 toxic chemicals in his or her body and the exposure to toxic chemicals came from everyday activities and products. Breast Cancer Action released State of the Evidence 2006: What Is the Connection Between the Environment and Breast Cancer? which provided compelling scientific evidence pointing to some of the 100,000 synthetic chemicals in use today as contributing to the development of breast cancer, either by altering hormone function or gene expression. The report also identifies radiation exposure, such as that from X-rays and CT scans, as the longest-established environmental cause of breast cancer. In the United States, a woman's lifetime risk of developing breast cancer has tripled in the last 40 years.

Wendy Mesley, co-host of CBC's Marketplace and breast cancer survivor, produced and hosted the investigative documentary Chasing the Cancer Answer, that provided revealing interviews with an outspoken American doctor, frustrated cancer victims in southern Ontario, pharmaceutical sales representatives in Paris, France, and activists working to increase awareness of prevention measures. Greenpeace issued a report that Chernobyl cancer deaths have been grossly underestimated. Award-winning and highly-respected journalist and public commentator Bill Moyers produced a PBS documentary Trade Secrets investigating the history of the chemical revolution and the body burden of synthetic chemicals that pose dangers to human health.

We have additional links related to the topic of environmental links to cancer risk at Earth Day: environmental cancer risks and Cancer Epidemic: are we poisoned from birth? Cancer defines about 100 diseases characterized by the uncontrolled, abnormal growth of cells. No one single factor is going to be the cause for all cancers. However, environmental exposure from toxic chemicals cannot be ignored as one, and perhaps multiple, contributing factors in raising the risks of developing cancer.

In 1999, Art beCAUSE, a non-profit organization was founded by two best friends, breast cancer survivor Eleanor F. Anbinder and art gallery owner Joyce Crieger. Anbinder had been diagnosed with breast cancer and over the years of her cancer survivorship she had watched other women die from the disease.

When Anbinder was diagnosed, she did not have a family history of breast cancer. In becoming active with Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition, she began to wonder what was causing the increased rates of breast cancer diagnosis.

With her best friend, Joyce Creiger owner of Creiger Dane Gallery on Newbury Street, the two decided to use a percentage of the profits from art sold in the gallery to fund research to look into the environmental causes of breast cancer. Art beCAUSE supports three organizations: The National Breast Cancer Coalition, Silent Spring and Seed the Scientist. You can visit Art beCAUSE on the web to learn more about the organization's events and activities.

The results of an Environmental Working Group Body Burden testing program has revealed that mothers and daughters share a common body burden of at least 35 environmental cancer-causing chemicals including phthalate plasticizers, lead, methyl mercury, brominated flame retardants, and Teflon and Scotchgard perfluorochemicals PFOA and PFOS. These pollutants appear to be passed from a mother's placenta or breast milk into her daughter's body. Some of the key findings in this testing program found:

• Daughters tested had more chemicals in common with their mothers than with a group of 16 other women who were tested. This underscores the long-lasting influence of the pollution passed from mother to daughter, and their shared exposures as the child grows up. 
• The chemical burden inherited by daughters at birth will last for decades, some for a lifetime -- and the daughters will pass this same chemical burden on to their children.
• Chemicals that persist in the body were found at higher levels in mothers than daughters, showing how chemicals can build up in the body over a lifetime.
  

According to EWG, the six biomonitoring programs -- conducted between 2000 and 2006 -- revealed a total of 455 different pollutants, pesticides, and industrial chemicals in the bodies or cord blood of 72 different people -- including ten newborn babies with an average of 200 chemicals in each child.

"EPA studies show that children from birth to age two are ten times more sensitive to cancer-causing chemicals than adults," said Jane Houlihan, EWG's vice president for research. "Scientists have found that chemicals toxic effects can be passed down for four generations, by causing permanent genetic changes that can be inherited. A stew of toxic chemicals is not the legacy mothers want to hand down to their children." To read an overview of all results from EWG's Body Burden testing program, go here.

Dr. Sandra Steingraber, cancer survivor, ecologist and author, will present Contaminated without Consent: How Chemical Pollutants in Air, Food, and Water Violate Human Rights at the University of Illinois at Springfield on Wednesday, April 19, in observance of Earth Day. Earth Day, in its 38th year, is recognized on April 22 as a day to raise awareness for environmental issues affecting our health and the health of our planet, and as a way for people to celebrate the planet and encourage responsibility for it.

Dr. Steingraber is an internationally recognized author of the book Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment focused on environmental links to cancer and reproductive health. According to background information about her book, it was the first work to bring data on toxic release together with data from U.S. cancer registries. She has a new book called Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood. In addition, Dr. Steingraber was named Ms. Magazine's Woman of the Year in 1997. In 1998 she received the Jennifer Altman Foundation's first annual Altman Award for inspiring and poetic use of science to elucidate the causes of cancer as well as the Will Solimene Award from the American Medical Writers Association for excellence in medical communication. The Sierra Club calls her the Rachel Carson for our times.

This presentation is free and open to the public. You can also see a live webcast of the presentation at LIVE WEBCASTS FROM UIS, on April 19, 2006 at 7:30 p.m.