Is Your Job Increasing Your Risk of Breast Cancer?

In what they're calling a "first-of-its-kind" analysis, the San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Fund has crunched the existing data and released an analysis showing 20 occupations that are associated with elevated risk of breast cancer compared against the general population.

The issue is the toxins that people in certain jobs may be exposed to on a daily basis that could increase risk of the disease. Breast Cancer Fund is dedicated to looking specifically at potential environmental factors that influence development of breast cancer.

"In the course of doing that," said Jeanne Rizzo, president and CEO of the group, "we have come to hear over and over again the issue of occupation exposure. It comes up in scientific literature, that not enough attention is being paid to women in the workplace."

To examine the available data, Breast Cancer Fund convened 200 experts in a two-year long study group and found increased risk for nurses, teachers, librarians, lawyers, radiology and lab technicians, and journalists.

But professional women as a group bear known risk factors for breast cancer, including childbearing at an older age (or not at all), hormone use and alcohol consumption.

Most of the studies in their review already accounted for those risks, Sharima Rasanayagam, director of science at the Breast Cancer Fund, told me.

Dr. Robert Hiatt chairs the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC San Francisco and has special expertise in breast cancer. He was largely positive about the analysis, saying that it summarized a great deal of studies into one place.

But he also noted that breast cancer is a complex disease. "This report is pretty much focused on chemical exposures, which are one piece of a very complicated picture," he said. "I can't tell how much consideration has been given to the many other factors that are involved."

The authors were clear that more research is needed including:

• Include women in occupational studies
• Study young women, when possible, and follow their children
• Measure exposures directly
• Understand other factors that may affect risk