We’re surrounded by endocrine-disrupting compounds at every turn, not to mention countless pesticides and other environmental toxins. Could all this chemical crap have ties to rising rates of breast cancer in women around the world? In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Breast Cancer Fund is highlighting its 2010 State of the Evidence report on how the disease is linked to all kinds of toxic substances, and you can’t afford not to read it.

A long string of recent studies cited in the report have linked breast cancer to everything from seemingly omnipresent BPA to air pollution. “Recent data demonstrate that early exposure to BPA leads to abnormalities in mammary tissue development that are observable even during gestation and are maintained into adulthood,” reads one sobering paragraph.

It’s easy to get lost in doom and gloom when the evidence is so overwhelming. For me, as someone who has struggled with hormone-related health problems associated with higher risk of cancer, the data can be downright frightening: who knew that sunscreen is often estrogenic?

Read the report. Get angry. Pass this information on to every woman you know. Then, take action. Don’t just go pink for a single month – go green for life. Your life. Ditch products packed with unpronounceable ingredients and go for natural alternatives. Stop consuming hormonally modified foods.

If you’re a regular Eco Chick reader, chances are you’re already doing a lot of positive things – in particular, reducing your exposure to toxic substances in personal care products and household products from cosmetics to cleaners. It can seem like an insurmountable challenge when you’re first starting out, but it gets easier – stick with it.

And there are plenty of other things you can do to lower your risk of developing breast cancer, even if you have a family history of the disease. The American Cancer Society recommends regular exercise, a healthy body weight and low consumption of alcoholic beverages as important ways to be proactive.

Want more tips? Check out the Breast Cancer Fund’s Twitter feed, which offers up simple ways to beat breast cancer in 140 characters or less.

Photo by Anthony Cain

A page from 'State of the Evidence' shows the difficulty of linking risks to causes for breast cancer. Courtesy Breast Cancer Fund. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and you're likely to see pink ribbons along with fall colors, as groups raise money for breast cancer research and emphasize the importance of early detection. It's a good cause. Does it go far enough? The Breast Cancer Fund, a San Francisco nonprofit, says no. It wants to se...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Images courtesy of ecostiletto This guest post was written by Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff of ecostiletto. Seeing pink? It must be October, when the beauty industry slaps a whole bunch of pink ribbons on products that donate to breast cancer research. Sounds great, right? Not exactly, when many of these companies formulate their products with petro-chemically derived ingredients that a...Read the full story on TreeHugger

A team of experimental biologists has successfully “abolished” cognitive decline in a population of aging, transgenic mice (TGM). Characteristics of “youthfulness”, such as learning capacity and physical activity, were restored in the mice following feeding of the 30 component supplement.

The same cocktail had been previously correlated to a modest increase in life span, but this most recent research focused on prolonging youthful functions –  “zestful living” –  instead of simply prolonging lifespan.

A team of researchers from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada has found that when they fed a group of older transgenic mice an anti-aging dietary supplement (AASUP) designed to “ameliorate five mechanisms associated with aging”, they showed no reduction in daily physical activity compared with a greater than 50% decrement in old mice not fed the “cocktail”.

Lack of physical activity correlates with other brain function deficits, such as long-term potentiation (memory transference and retention), which is crucial to learning. The researchers  were able to document age-related patterns in learning ability through comparing the effects of the AASUP on two groups of young mice–one of which was the transgenic variety (that over-expresses a growth hormone {GH} associated with low “survivorship”)–and then comparing these groups with a group of unsupplemented older mice.

Quoting from the paper’s abstract: “Learning appeared inferior in both genotypes of very young mice but TGM were confirmed to be superior to normal mice upon maturity. Older TGM, however, showed rapid age-related loss of their exceptional learning, whereas normal mice at 1 year of age showed little change.”

In the young TGM, over-expression in the brain of GH enables superior maze-learning ability, which is maintained through maturity (compared to normal mice).  However, as these same TGM age, their brains experience elevated  levels of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS), which in turn cause various types of cellular damage and malfunctioning. This is especially true of the cell’s mitochondria (it’s “energy factories”). It is held by many in the field that an accumulation of mitochondrial mutations causes the effects we associate with aging.

Such free radical processes are associated with reduced longevity and survivorship. Through feeding of the cocktail (via soaked pieces of bagel) to the old TGM, their cognitive decline was reversed.

The complex cocktail was “formulated to promote membrane and mitochondrial integrity, increase insulin sensitivity, reduce reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, and ameliorate inflammation.” Most of the ingredients can be purchase over the counter, but not all–a few are co-enzymes and other factors that have to be specially prepared in a lab.

As to administering the cocktail to other mammals, including humans, the researchers note several risks, such as the possibility if inhibited normal growth and possible impairment of the immune system. RONS also promote apoptosis (or programmed cell death) which is a cell’s defense against becoming cancerous. The AASUP might inhibit RONS to such a degree that this cell death defense is blocked.

The researchers acknowledge that the specific roles that some of the ingredients play in cellular functioning remain to be explored (they don’t know how exactly some ingredients work), nevertheless, the results show the AASUP effectively offset age-related “cognitive deterioration.”

This study is proof of principle that such complex dietary cocktails can dramatically reduce (and seemingly reverse for a time) these biomarkers of aging. “The ability to modify these processes via a dietary supplement provides a model that promises insights into both normal cognition and its age-related deterioration.”

Here is the list of ingredients (and dosages) for the AASUP used in the study:

Vitamin B1	0.72 mg/day	Flax Seed oil	21.6 mg/day
Vitamin B3	0.72 mg/day	Folic Acid	0.01 mg/day
Vitamin B6	0.72 mg/day	Garlic	21.6 mcg/day
Vitamin B12	0.72 mcg/day	Ginger	7.2 mg/day
Vitamin C	3.6 mg/day	Gingko Biloba	1.44 mg/day
Vitamin D	2.5 IU/day	Ginseng (Canadian)	8.64 mg/day
Vitamin E	1.44 IU/day	Green Tea Extracts	7.2 mg/day
Acetyl L-Carnitine	14.4 mg/day	L-Glutathione	0.36 mg/day
Alpha-Lipoic Acid	0.72 mg/day	Magnesium	0.72 mg/day
ASA	2.5 mg/day	Melatonin	0.01 mg/day
Beta Carotene	50.0 IU/day	N-Acetyl Cysteine	7.2 mg/day
Bioflavinoids	4.32 mg/day	Potassium	0.36 mg/day
Chromium Picolinate	1.44 mcg/day	Rutin	0.72 mg/day
Cod Liver Oil	5.04 IU/day	Selenium	1.08 mcg/day
CoEnzyme Q10	0.44 mg/day	Zinc (chelated)	0.14 mg/day
DHEA	0.15 mg/day

The study, ‘A Dietary Supplement Abolishes Age-Related Cognitive Decline in Transgenic Mice Expressing Elevated Free Radical Processes’, by J.A. Lemon, D.R. Boreham and C.D. Rollo, was published last month in the journal Experimental Biology and Medicine.

Photo – Rama CC – BY – SA 2.0 France

I thought this quote on ‘cancer’ and the environment was too good and too appropriate for the issues we discuss here on Planetsave to pass up.

The quote is by Ben Stewart via HeartSpiritMind on tumblr.

Cancer begins with a group of cells within a community that failed to communicate with the conscious signal of the organism. Those cells begin to grow out of control and spread to other areas of the organism. This very disease is evident in our world today. The cancer upon our Earth is the domination of our false ego and our divorce from nature. Collectively among every human, vanity leads to segregation and competition. Competition leads to fear and greed. Greed leads to deceit and immorality. And immorality is the breeding ground for illness, waging war on our Earth. Every act of hatred and destructiveness in our world begins with self hate and self destructiveness, and that all begins with a breakdown of communication.

For more like this, check out:

• Are We on a Crumbling Road to Nowhere?
• Sanctuary City: Capitalism is Dead

Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

The Robinsons model the latest in tinfoil pyjamas Forget the tinfoil hat, it is time for tinfoil pyjamas. Scientific American tells us that the bed frames and box springs in most American beds are half the wavelength of TV and FM signals and are acting as antennae, causing skin and breast cancers on victims' left sides, which are usually right were the maximum strength of the EMF would be....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image Source: red5standingby Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, DC, has discovered that many cash register receipts contain levels of Bisphenol-A (BPA) hundreds of times higher than those found in hard plastic water bottles, baby ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: Zooboing, via Flickr Industry associations state their desire to "ensure that existing FDA regulatory oversight is enhanced." Advocate groups for safer cosmetics have started a full push to get the public support for cosmetic safety reform. So this should be easy, right?...Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo: backyardnature.net About half of states in the U.S. have official rocks. West Virginia has coal. And California has serpentine .... for now. State Senator, Democrat Gloria Romero of East L.A. has proposed dropping serpentine as the state's official rock because it contains asbestos. The State Senate has approved the bill; it is currently under review in the assembly. Proponents of the law argue that serpentine is a grim reminder ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: Asia Arsenic Network Mass poisonings due to arsenic contaminated water in Bangladesh are the tragic unintended consequence of humanitarian efforts to alleviate disease in Bangladesh by building many deep tube wells to produce water for drinking and irrigation. On Saturday, the results of a ten year, large population study of the link between arsenic contamination and diseases or death in Bangladesh were published in Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image: Jason O'Halloran, Flickr Bills have been introduced in the U.S. House and Senate to reform the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Although it is barely on the radar of most news media and public awareness, this may be bigger than the gulf oil spill, health care, or even global climate change. In the words of Jeffrey Hollender, Chief Inspired Protagonist (CIP) of Seventh Generation, "this is probably the most important piec...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Dishwashing detergent is among the household cleaning products containing ingredients that could form a cancer-causing contaminant in treated wastewater. Photo by rubberglovelover via Flickr. Guest bloggers Andrea Donsky and Randy Boyer are co-founders of NaturallySavvy.com. Ingredients commonly found in shampoo, Read the full story on TreeHugger

The New Yorker has published a quite thorough piece on the issue of Bisphenol A, the agent that the article's author, Jerome Groopman, says "may be among the world's most vilified chemicals." Bisphenol A (BPA), which is a nearly ubiquitous chemical used in thousands of plastic items and other products, is certainly one of the most vilified substances on the pages o...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image Source: ...Stephanie... The original Ask Pablo article answering this question was very popular and the Environmental Working Group has just published its 2010 Sunscreen Guide. Since summer is right around the corner, this topic is more relevant than ever. The following article is completely updated based on the findings of the 2010 r...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Guest blogger Sara Snow is a green lifestyle expert and board member for Discovery's 24/7 future-forward network Planet Green. Last week the President's Cancer Panel released a landmark report suggesting that thus far public health officials have "grossly underestimated" the role environmental contaminants may be playing in the 1.5 million Americans who are diagnosed with cancer each year. The report called for stricter regulations on chemicals, especially noting the importance of avoiding chemicals during pregnancy when the risk of damage ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Credit: Flickr via Ian Webb. You won't find Lobster Boy in Hartford, Connecticut. Or Salt Lake City, Utah, or Denver, Colorado, for that matter. Those are the top three most "Suntelligent" big cities in the U.S., according to a survey by the American Academy of Dermatology. The most sun-dumb? Cleveland, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image Source: Kelly Sue Dear Pablo: I have heard that sunscreen actually causes more skin cancer than it prevents. Is there any truth to this? It sounds unbelievable but there is actually some truth here. In 2009, the Environmental Working Group released a major study on sunscreen, in which they independently tested almost 2000 sunscreens. Only 1 in 10 sunscreens offer superior protection and healthier ingredients. There are two main concerns about sunscreen; the protection that they offer, and the ch...Read the full story on TreeHugger

My cell phone makes me feel funny. Does yours? I couldn't tell if it was my better body awareness from yoga or my generally strong cell phone neurosis (long live the bees!). Every time I held my phone up to my ear, I felt a vibratory drum-like sensation as though something external and vampire-ish was sucking life out of me. Dash in a little of my hypochondria and you can imagine the visions of brain tumors, breast cancer and salivary gland cancerRead the full story on TreeHugger

The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, VT, is leaking radioactive tritium. Photo via nrc.gov. Guest blogger Cara Smusiak is a journalist and regular contributor to NaturallySavvy.com's Naturally Green section. UPDATE: This post has been updated from its original version on 2/04/10.

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