New research on chemicals and breast cancer

It was sure a sexy headline: "Cleaning products linked to breast cancer." Imagine all the late-night jokes about that one ("Honey, I won't be cleaning anymore!")--well, maybe if late-night comics were women.

When I read the article, I was dumbfounded. The research sounded like a joke. It's a self-report survey in which women say how much chemical exposure they've had, and that is compared between women with and without a history of breast cancer. It sounded extremely weak.

But with the Shirley Sherrod debacle fresh in mind, I decided not to stop there. I clicked the link ("suggests") to get to the Science Daily description of the study, somewhat more in depth. It said that the study comes from an open-access journal called Environmental Health. Well, that's not great because it suggests that the study wasn't strong enough to be published in a regular, peer-reviewed, restricted access journal.

But OK. I then went to the study itself. Here it is. And it's not really too bad, as preliminary evidence goes. I won't be throwing out all the cleaning products in the house, but this is enough of a signal that other researchers should now do some deeper digging.

What I really want to say, though, is this: It is so important to evaluate the quality of the science behind any of these findings. There is breast cancer news every single day: eat this, don't eat that, Avastin doesn't work, don't clean your house. (OK, that last is a stretch.) Some of these findings are coming out of really important and rigorous research. Some are absolutely bogus and should not be listened to. And then there's the substantial middle, in which this study resides, where there are suggestive findings but so much potential for fear-mongering or knee-jerk reactions. Take a deep breath and read the study. Check it out. Don't take the news article's word for it.

And more...

I'm sure almost everyone has heard the story that broke last week, about pharmaceuticals in our drinking water. The linked article highlights estrogens as one component commonly polluting our water. Now, my breast cancer was hormone negative, but the vast majority are stimulated by estrogen or progesterone, or both. As women worry about avoiding soy milk, I wonder if they think about the risks in drinking water--risks that can't be avoided, apparently, by switching to bottled waters. (They can be avoided through the right home filters--which is its own challenging issue.)

And I'm feeling just a little bit guilty about flushing my own toxins (e.g., the post-bladder remains of Adriamycin) during chemo...

To fight cancer, we have to fight a lot of other things...

...like our government's refusal to protect our individual lives, in favor of protecting corporate profits.

I know a lot of readers visit this blog looking for support and perspective on dealing with breast cancer, and I don't mean to offend anyone's political sensibilities. But this is germane. I struggle to maintain my survivorship by trying to control whatever I can control: to eat healthy food (not polluted, not full of chemicals, and grown to maximize nutrient value); to exercise a lot; to give my body both motion and rest, challenge and care; and to stay balanced emotionally.

And then, as much as we try to do these things, we live in a world that could either support our efforts, or be a hostile environment against which we have to fight. And when our White House decides it will lean on the agency charged with helping us have a healthy world, urging it away from the strongest and most protective standards (for whatever reason, but especially for the benefit of corporations, which do not get cancer but do make big bucks)--when this happens, I'm really disgusted and angry.