Eco Design: Hitting Matters
This column could be about Mark McGwire's incredible home run hitting season. I wish it were, but it's not. It's about me and how I was hit with a ton of bricks.
On September 8, 1998, McGwire hit his 62nd home run for the year over the wall in Busch Stadium. On that same day, I received my first chemotherapy infusion as treatment for the breast cancer that had been diagnosed a month earlier. As I watched the drugs enter my body I thought about the irony of voluntarily-albeit kicking and screaming-letting toxic poisons be put into me while I fight so hard to get them out of our environment. I also thought about the many calls and letters I have received from women all over the country telling me of their experiences as breast cancer sufferers. As one of them put it, "Hey, we're everywhere. One out of nine women in the U.S. will get breast cancer during her lifetime."
One of the first questions a newly-diagnosed breast cancer patient asks is, "How did this happen to me?" The search for an answer is a futile one for no one really knows what causes most breast cancers. Books list the risk factors: family history, age, childbearing, diet, etc. But none of the information that I've read or come across on the Internet lists environmental factors, save one. That book is Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book, considered by many to be the bible for women with breast cancer. There is a section in it, "Pesticides and Other Environmental Hazards," from which much of following information comes.
Dr. Love cites a number of studies that looked at the pesticide DDT as a cause of breast cancer. The results are inconclusive, but she reminds us that, "In the 1950s they used to spray DDT from trucks in the suburbs to kill the mosquitoes and kids used to run after the trucks and play in the spray . . . Pesticides were used on golf courses and lawns. These chemicals do not go away. They sit on the ground contaminating ground water and eventually drinking water. Most of these chemicals have subsequently been banned, but their residue persists in our lives and in our environment."
The areas of the country where breast cancer risk is highest are those inhabited by well-to-do caucasian women, perhaps those that grew up in suburbs such as Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, NY. In fact, in 1993 breast cancer activists on Long Island convened a conference to investigate the link between environmental pollutants and the disease. Dr. Love co-chaired this event which raised a lot of important questions and also exposed some interesting issues. "For example," writes Dr. Love, "it appears that much of the water contamination we're exposed to comes not from drinking water, but from showers and baths, because it's vaporized in the hot water and we inhale the gases. So if you go out and buy your nice bottled water and then take a long, hot shower after you exercise, you're still exposed to carcinogens. There's no avoiding it."
As a result of that conference, scientists at the Columbia University School of Public Health, working in collaboration with other New York City and Long Island investigators, are conducting an epidemiologic study to determine whether certain environmental exposures increase the risk of breast cancer among women on Long Island. This study was mandated by the U.S. Congress and is funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Studies such as this take a long time and results are not yet available. When they are they may not help those of us already infected, but they offer hope to our daughters and grandaughters, as well as the necessary information for making environmentally sound decisions.
But, as Dr. Love points out, "Carcinogens come not only from where we live but also from what we do." She questions her breast cancer patients on whether they have any occupational exposures to carcinogens. Most say no, but then it turns out that perhaps they are manicurists exposed to fumes from nail polish removers or, in one case, a painter. "She was exposed to all the solvents used to clean oil-based paints, as well as to the cadmium in red paint, which is a very strong carcinogen in some studies."
Dr. Love concludes that the cause of breast cancer will probably turn out to be not just one thing but a combination of environmental and genetic components, which really isn't news, but which simply confirms that some things we can control and some things we can't. So I will continue to learn, speak and write on the environmental issues that design professionals need to know in order to make intelligent and compassionate choices. It's no longer just a fervent interest. Now, it's hit home.
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