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GENEVA, Switzerland, December 9, 2005 (ENS) - Sixty percent of the benefits that the global ecosystem provides to support life on Earth - fresh water, clean air, abundant wildlife and

Over the last 40 years, a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer in the United States has nearly tripled. Up to half of these cases are unexplained by genetics or lifestyle factors, according to “State of the Evidence 2006,” a new report that examines connections between the environment and breast cancer. Published by the Breast Cancer Fund and Breast Cancer Action, the report points to two likely culprits in rising breast cancer rates: synthetic chemicals and radiation.

“Compelling scientific evidence points 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’s authors say. It also identifies radiation exposure from X-rays, CT scans and other sources as “the longest-established environmental cause of breast cancer.”

Some medical professionals say the only way to rid ourselves of medicine's vast piles of waste is to shrink the health care industry itself. Are they heretics or visionaries?

 

My work, too often, brings me to witness women who suffer and die from breast cancer. I come to this work as executive director of the Breast Cancer Fund, which is a national environmental health organization with a mission to prevent breast cancer by working to eliminate the toxic exposures that are contributing to this disease. I was a psychiatric nurse for seven years. I actually think it’s my best credential for this crazy world of advocacy.

For thousands of years, the Parsi people of India have practiced a form of “sky” burial in which the dead are placed high atop a sacred Tower of Silence. This form of burial reflects their basic belief that neither the living nor the earth should ever be contaminated by the dead. Neither earth, water, nor fire ever touch the dead and thus remain pure. This particular form of burial, as with many ancient religious practices, also has real public health benefits. As Mark Twain wrote in 1897, sky burials “disseminate no corruption, no impurities, of any sort, no disease-germs; that no wrap, no garment which has touched the dead is allowed to touch the living afterward; that from the Towers of Silence nothing proceeds which can carry harm to the outside world.”

So much of the news on health care in the United States is bad and getting worse. The per person cost of health care in this country, now $5,540 a year, is rising four times faster than wages. Currently Americans spend almost 15 percent of their income on health care, far more than other advanced countries.

 

Pete Myers is a founder, CEO, and chief scientist of Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit that increases public understanding of emerging scientific links between environmental contaminants and human health. Myers also is a co-author of Our Stolen Future, a groundbreaking book that sounded the alarm on the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals on health and development. In the decade since the book’s publication, mounting scientific evidence has further supported the authors’ warnings that industrial chemicals interfere with key biological processes, leading to disease and disability. Myers spoke with Kim Ridley about current research, controversies, and reasons for hope.

video excerpt from Lois Gibbs 2006 Conference plenary

 

Winona La Duke is an Ojibwe community organizer, economist and author who lives and works on the White Earth reservation in Minnesota, where she works on Indigenous rights and environmental issues. She is the founding director of both the White Earth Land Recovery Program and Honor the Earth. Winona ran as the vice presidential candidate for the Green Party in the United States presidential elections in l996 and 2000.

Don’t Medicate Your Bay: Prevent Pollution, Dispose Drugs Safely.