Breast Cancer Clusters Exist Worldwide

In a March 2010 report entitled, "Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What Do We Do," a presidential panel concluded the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. The report's authors wrote in a letter to President Obama, "The panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our Nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."

Speaking of the Environmental Cancer Report...Dr. Jennifer Lowry, a medical toxicologist at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, Mo., said, " the report finally lends a voice that could be heard that the environment does play an important role in the health of all people of every age."

We believe there are many lifestyle factors that contribute to America's cancer problem, but if there were no environmental factors cancer death rates would be more evenly distributed across the country than they are. We agree with the panel...environmental factors have been poorly investigated in the past and strongly support more rigorous testing in the future. We have prepared a special "Cancer Cluster Map" that suggests where you live can have a strong influence on your likely hood of dying from cancer. It makes no attempt to identify environmental issues, but it does indicate where one might want to take a look. Simply click on any state in the USA Map to display a larger version and mouse over the counties to see the impact cancer has on the lives of the people who live there:

The data in the Cancer Cluster Map above is from the CDC years 2002-2006. Multiple years are required to provide a full range of counties and increase accuracy. The current cancer death rate in the USA is 181 per 100,000 population, age adjusted. We believe the new federal environmental report may shed new light on the relationship between lifestyle and cancer. We also suspect dramatic improvements in cancer death rates, such as those that took place in Marin County California, are unlikely to be achieved in such a short period of time through lifestyle changes alone. In Marin the problem was Breast Cancer and it was centered among a highly educated and successful cluster of wealthy white women who were likely already aware of the lifestyle adjustments that appear to have "solved" the problem.

A View of San Francisco through the spires
of the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin
Headlands.

Marin County, California is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful and most highly desirable places to live in the entire world. Its cliffs and shorelines, harbor inlets, rolling green hills, houseboats, restaurants, vineyards and what seems like hundreds of miles of bike trails also make it an ideal place to enjoy a healthy Lifestyle. Marin ranks near the top in the country in Life Expectancy and has a very low incidence of heart disease, stroke and most major cancers. But it wasn't long ago that Marin was on the verge of becoming the breast cancer capitol of America. At one point Marin's breast cancer death rate was 20% higher than neighboring counties and by far the highest in the state. In places like Marin no stone is left unturned to get to the bottom of the problem. Surrounded by some of the most sophisticated medical facilities and research institutions in the world and with unlimited amounts of money to spend they investigated everything including the soil, the water and the ocean breeze before concluding the primary cause was a Lifestyle that included having children late in life and too much alcohol. Was Marin simply a victim of its own success?

Today Breast Cancer death rates are down in America and they are down in Marin too. Some of this success is due to advances in medical science and improved lifestyles. But if you accept the findings of the new Federal Environmental Cancer Study then citing only Lifestyle as the primary source of cancer problems becomes more difficult to believe. According to Dr. Phillip Landrigan, director of the Children's Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City..... "For the past 30 years there has been systematic effort to minimize the importance of environmental factors in carcinogenesis. There has been disproportionate emphasis on lifestyle factors and insufficient attention paid to discovering and controlling environmental exposures," he said. "This report marks a sea change."

We could not be happier for wealthy white women in Marin County, who appear to be able to put most of their Breast Cancer nightmare behind them. But we remain concerned about a series of statistics related to Marin during the period of time when this issue remained unsettled. Cumulative incidence rates (1988-2001) show that Hispanic women living in Marin at that time had higher rates of invasive breast cancer than Hispanic women in other areas of the San Francisco Bay Area and California. Hispanic women tend to have babies early in life and aren't known for drinking excessive amounts of alcohol. In light of the new Federal Report we can't help but wonder if this data was just overlooked or if these Hispanic women were consuming excessive amounts of alcohol and began having babies late in life too?