Breasts (33 page)

A recent study found that California women:
Kim G. Harley et al., “PBDE Concentrations in Women’s Serum and Fecundability,”
Environmental Health Perspectives,
vol. 118, no. 5 (May 2010), pp. 699-704.

A Danish study showed an association:
Katharina Maria Main et al., “Flame Retardants in Placenta and Breast Milk and Cryptorchidism in Newborn Boys,”
Environmental Health Perspectives,
vol. 115, no. 10 (October 2007), pp. 1519-1526.

breast-fed infants and toddlers have considerably higher levels:
Daniel Carrizo et al., “Influence of Breastfeeding in the Accumulation of Polybromodiphenyl Ethers during the First Years of Child Growth,”
Environmental Science and Technology,
vol. 41, no. 14 (2007), pp. 4907-4912.

Some studies have found that breast-fed babies:
For example, see Jacobson and Jacobson, “Intellectual Impairment in Children Exposed to Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Utero,” pp. 783-789.

Recent studies show that lactating mothers off-load:
Kim Hooper et al., “Depuration of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) in Breast Milk from California First-Time Mothers (Primiparae),”
Environmental Health Perspectives,
vol. 115, no. 9 (September 2007), pp. 1271-1275.

For other chemicals, the dump rate is even higher:
As cited in Hooper et al., “Depuration of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers.”

Mothers who breast-feed for a year:
Cathrine Thomsen et al., “Changes in Concentrations of Perfluorinated Compounds, Poly brominated Diphenyl Ethers, and Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Norwegian Breast-Milk during Twelve Months of Lactation,”
Environmental Science and Technology,
vol.
44,
no. 24 (2010), pp. 9550-9556.

“likely to be carcinogenic in humans”:
Kyle Steenland et al., “Epidemiologic Evidence on the Health Effects of Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA),”
Environmental Health Perspectives,
vol. 118, no. 8 (August 2010), pp. 1100-1108.

Adult female striped and bottlenose dolphins are actually the “purest”:
Jennifer E. Yordy et al., “Life History as a Source of Variation for Persistent Organic Pollutant (POP) Patterns in a Community of Common Bottlenose Dolphins
(Tursiops truncatus)
Resident to Sarasota Bay, FL,”
Science of the Total Environment,
vol. 408, no. 9 (2010), pp. 2163-2172.

I decided to start with my house dust:
Chemical analysis of my house dust was done by Heather Stapleton, assistant professor of environmental chemistry, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University; author interview, December 2010.

seventy-six new and suspect flame-retardants:
Jacob de Boer, “Editorial: Special Issue: Contaminants in Food—Brominated
Flame Retardants,”
Molecular Nutrition and Food Research,
vol. 52, no. 2 (2008), pp. 185-186.

“Brave new world”:
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,
4th ed., available at
http://www.wordnik.com/words/brave%20new%20world
(accessed October 2011).

“Walking today in an unfamiliar biochemical wilderness”:
James S. Olson,
Bathsheba’s Breast: Women, Cancer, and History
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), p. 240.

Globally, breast cancer is the leading cause:
F. Kamangar et al., “Patterns of Cancer Incidence, Mortality, and Prevalence across Five Continents: Defining Priorities to Reduce Cancer Disparities in Different Geographic Regions of the World,”
Journal of Clinical Oncology,
vol. 24 (2006), pp. 2137-2150.

“omnis cellula e cellula”:
Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow,
Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebelehre
(Berlin: A. Hirschwald, 1858).

Humans are just about the only free-ranging animal:
Susan Love, clinical professor of surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, and president, Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, author interview, March 2009.

Domestic pets, if not spayed, get it:
Mel Greaves,
Cancer: The Evolutionary Legacy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 210.

Among the Kaingang women in Paraná, Brazil:
This is according to Edimara Patrícia da Silva et al., “Exploring Breast Cancer Risk Factors in Kaingáng Women in the Faxinal Indigenous Territory, Paraná State, Brazil, 2008,”
Cadernos de Saúde Pública,
vol. 25, no. 7 (2009), pp. 1493-1500.

One papyrus recommends applying a plaster:
James V. Ricci,
The Genealogy of Gynaecology: History of the Development of Gynaecology
through the Ages
(Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1943), p. 20, as cited in Marilyn Yalom,
A History of the Breast
(New York: Knopf, 1997), p. 206.

Anne of Austria, the mother of King Louis XIV:
Yalom,
History of the Breast,
p. 217.

De Morbis Artificum Diatriba:
Bernardino Ramazzini,
De Morbis Artificum Diatriba
(London: Printed for Andrew Bell et al., 1705), pp. 122-123.

“Childless women get it / And men when they retire”:
W. H.

Auden, “Miss Gee” (1937), published in
Another Time
(New York: Random House, 1940).

woman’s tumor was sometimes a different size:
Olson,
Bathsheba’s Breast,
p. 77.

“I am satisfied that in the ovary”:
George Thomas Beatson, quoted in Olson,
Bathsheba’s Breast,
p. 78.

breast cancer rates in the United States:
For breast cancer statistics, see “SEER Stat Fact Sheets: Breast,” at
http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html
.

he headed to Hiroshima:
For an excellent description of Malcolm Pike in Hiroshima, see Malcolm Gladwell, “John Rock’s Error,”
New Yorker,
March 13, 2000, pp. 52-63.

As early as the 1930s, scientists:
Olson,
Bathsheba’s Breast,
p.
178.

tufted-ear marmosets:
See Sarah Blaffer Hrdy,
Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2009), pp. 92-97.

“Not in our wildest dreams”:
Carl Djerassi,
The Pill, Pygmy Chimps and Degas’ Horse
(New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 58.

“Estrogen is to cancer what fertilizer”:
Roy Hertz, quoted in Olson,
Bathsheba’s Breast,
p. 178.

“Your problems are too complicated”:
Djerassi,
Pill, Pygmy Chimps and Degas’ Horse,
p. 135.

to make human breast cancer cells grow faster:
Brian E. Henderson et al., “Endogenous Hormones as a Major Factor in Human Cancer,”
Cancer Research,
vol. 42 (1982), pp. 3232-3239.

progesterone is just as bad, and possibly worse:
Sandra Haslam, a physiologist from Michigan State University, has been studying the nefarious effects of progesterone on mammary glands for years. “We’ve been pointing the finger at the wrong hormone all these years,” she told me (author interview, July 2011).

They ovulate approximately one hundred times:
Beverly I. Strassmann, “Menstrual Cycling and Breast Cancer: An Evolutionary Perspective,”
Journal of Women’s Health,
vol. 8, no. 2 (March 1999), pp. 193-202.

Today in America, nearly 20 percent of women:
Jane Lawler Dye, “Fertility of American Women: 2006,”
Current Population Reports,
U.S. Census Bureau, August 2008, available at
www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p20-558.pdf
.

a marketing article from the University of Southern California:
Alfred Kildow, “The Dashing Malcolm Pike,”
USC Health Magazine,
Summer 1996, available at
http://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/hmm/96summer/pike.html
(accessed October 2011).

Captive tigers and lions also suffer:
Greaves,
Cancer,
p.
210.

By 1992, Premarin:
Kathryn Huang and Megan Van Aelstyn, presentation of a Notre Dame case study, “Hormone Replacement Therapy and Wyeth,” available at
http://www.awpagesociety.com/images/uploads/Wyeth-Powerpoint.ppt
(accessed October 2011).

“I think of the menopause as a deficiency disease”:
Quoted in Jane E. Brody, “Physicians’ Views Unchanged on Use of Estrogen Therapy,”
New York Times,
December 5, 1975.

“living decay”:
Robert Wilson, quoted in Gary Null and Barbara Seaman,
For Women Only
(Toronto: Seven Stories Press, 1999), p. 751.

women “rich in estrogen”:
Robert Wilson, from
Feminine Forever
(1966), as quoted in Olson,
Bathsheba’s Breast,
p. 181.

anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy:
On caloric requirements of children, see Hrdy,
Mothers and Others,
p. 31. For a discussion of the grandmother hypothesis, see pp. 241-243.

Estrogen, miracle hormone that it is:
Karen J. Carlson, Stephanie A. Eisenstat, and Terra Ziporyn,
The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2004), p. 375.

Million Women Study:
For general information on the Million Women Study, see
http://www.millionwomenstudy.org/
.

The main culprit appeared to be progesterone:
The risk of estrogen alone to breast cancer is confusing and under discussion. While the Million Women Study found a 66 percent higher risk for women taking estrogen alone, a more recent study found that it was actually moderately protective against breast cancer in women with hysterectomies. It still, however, found an increased risk of stroke. See A. Z. LaCroix et al., “Health Outcomes after Stopping Conjugated Equine Estrogens among Postmenopausal Women with Prior Hysterectomy: A Randomized Controlled Trial,”
Journal of the American Medical Association,
vol. 305 (2011), pp. 1305-1314.

Overall, hormone therapy in Britain caused:
V. Beral et al., “Breast Cancer and Hormone-Replacement Therapy in the Million Women Study,”
Lancet,
no. 362 (2003), pp. 419-427.

“Do unto those downstream”:
Wendell Berry,
Citizenship Papers
(Berkeley: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2003), p. 214.

Although the military knew:
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, “Analyses and Historical Reconstruction of Groundwater Flow, Contaminant Fate and Transport, and Distribution of Drinking Water within the Service Areas of the Hadnot Point and Holcomb Boulevard Water Treatment Plants and Vicinities, U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Chapter C: Occurrence of Selected Contaminants in
Groundwater at Installation Restoration Program Sites,” October 2010, p. C7.

At that time, analysis from one well:
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, “Analyses and Historical Reconstruction of Groundwater Flow, Contaminant Fate and Transport, and Distribution of Drinking Water,” p. C94.

Tap water at the elementary school:
Camp Lejeune Water System analysis document for dichloroethylene and trichloroethylene, North Carolina Department of Human Resources, Division of Health Services, Occupational Health Laboratory, February 4, 1985, analyzed and signed by John L. Neal.

TCE alone has been detected:
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, “Toxic Substances Portal—Trichloroethylene (TCE),” July 2003, at
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=172&tid=30
.

present in 34 percent of the nation’s drinking water:
President’s Cancer Panel,
Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, 2008-2009 Annual Report,
National Cancer Institute, April 2010, p. 33, available at
http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/annualReports/index.htm
.

In September 2011, the EPA formally reclassified TCE:
For the EPA’s assessment report, released September 29, 2011, see
http://www.epa.gov/iris/supdocs/0199index.html
.

is still used by most dry-cleaners:
Ray Smith, “The New Dirt on Dry Cleaners,”
Wall Street Journal,
July 28, 2011.

once used as an aftershave:
Christopher Portier, director, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, author interview, July 2011.

One recent European study:
Sara Villeneuve et al., “Occupation and Occupational Exposure to Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in Male Breast Cancer: A Case—Control Study in Europe,”
Occupational and Environmental Medicine,
vol. 67, no. 12 (2010), pp. 837-844.

Vinyl chloride has been linked to breast cancer:
Peter F. Infante et al., “A Historical Perspective of Some Occupationally Related Diseases in Women,”
Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine,
vol. 36, no. 8 (1994), pp. 826-831. See also S. Villeneuve, “Breast Cancer Risk by Occupation and Industry: Analysis of the CECILE Study, a Population-Based Case-Control Study in France,”
American Journal of Industrial Medicine,
vol. 54, no. 7 (2011), pp. 499-509.

Another study found a very moderately increased risk:
A. Blair et al., “Mortality and Cancer Incidence of Aircraft Maintenance Workers Exposed to Trichloroethylene and Other Organic Solvents and Chemicals: Extended Follow
Up,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine,
vol. 55, no. 3 (1998), pp. 161-171.

Some studies found that dry-cleaning workers:
P.
R.
Band et al., “Identification of Occupational Cancer Risks in British Columbia,”
Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine,
vol. 42, no. 3 (2000), pp. 284-310.

other studies found a lower incidence:
A. Blair et al., “Cancer and Other Causes of Death among a Cohort of Dry Cleaners,”
British Journal of Industrial Medicine,
vol. 47, no. 3 (1990), pp. 162-168.

A 1999 study looking at Danish women:
Johnni Hansen, “Breast Cancer Risk among Relatively Young Women Employed in Solvent-Using Industries,”
American Journal of Industrial Medicine,
vol. 36, no. 1 (1999), pp. 43-47.