More Research Needed to Determine What Chemicals May Be Linked to Breast Cancer

Breast cancer could be linked to environmental chemicals. Research on laboratory animals is known to cause mammary (breast tumors). Some animals tested positive for breast cancer. Exposures to certain chemicals early in life may cause breast development problems and breast cancer.

Many Americans are exposed to thousands of occurring and synthetic chemicals over a lifetime. These chemicals are essential for life and beneficial, while other chemicals are harmful and bad for your health. Some common means of being exposed to these chemicals are: Contact with our skin, the air we breathe, and through the foods and beverages we consume. Fetuses can also be exposed to chemicals that cross the placenta while in the womb. Babies may be exposed through the breast milk they are receiving from their mother.

Some chemicals in the body need to be "activated" by enzymes to become cancer-causing chemicals (carcinogens). There are other chemicals that pose no cancer risk, while others act as beneficial "anti-cancer" agents. The body handles these chemicals in different ways, and they have different potential in the way it can contribute to breast cancer risk.

Established breast cancer risk factors include: Having a first child late in life, having a mother or sister with breast cancer, not having any children, going through menopause later in life, regular menstrual periods earlier, and exposure to breast ionizing radiation, or benign breast disease. These factors only explain half the breast cancer cases.

Countries with the lowest breast cancer cases include Japan, China, Africa, and India. The countries with the highest number of breast cancer cases include North America, Northern Europe, and Australia. There is no known reason why there are geographical differences in breast cancer rates. Studies on Japanese women for breast cancer, who migrate to the United States, have seen an increase in breast cancer found in Japanese women. Within one or two generations breast cancer rates of descendants of Japanese women migrating to the United States increased.

Future avenues in research of cancer show more studies are needed. There are more studies needed to explore a wide variety of chemicals that may be a greater risk for women to develop breast cancer. There is an interest to determine if antihistamines and antidepressants play a role in breast cancer risks. Studies are also being done on environmental chemicals such as phthalates used in plastics. Researchers want to see if this plays a role in premature breast development and later have a risk of breast cancer. A combination of studies is needed in the areas of humans, animals, and molecular-based research. These studies are needed to determine how environmental chemicals as well as genetics, determine the person's risk of developing breast and other cancers.