草莓传媒

Jeanne Rizzo, CEO and president of the Breast Cancer Fund, co-chaired the federal panel. The Fund has been working for years to call attention to toxic chemicals and radiation that could trigger breast cancer.

Rizzo says the recommendations amount to a “paradigm shift,” explaining that only a fraction of federal breast cancer research money currently goes toward looking at environmental causes.

Most of the research on breast cancer causes takes place under the auspices of the , which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

NIEHS Director Linda Birnbaum says while genetics plays a role in determining breast cancer risk, the majority of women who get the disease do not have a close relative with it.

She says there have been studies of women who immigrated to the United States from Japan, a country with a much lower breast cancer rate. Over the course of several decades, their breast cancer risk rose to match that of American women.

Birnbaum says the change in risk is not due to genes because they don’t evolve that fast.

“Genes don’t change that quickly. Our genes take generations, mult-multi generations to change,” she says, adding that the environment was the likely cause.

She says once researchers track down the environmental causes of breast cancer, it may become a largely preventable disease.

“You can’t change your genes,” she says, “but you can change your environment.”

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