Canadian Safety Reporter

3 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2015 News | February 2015 | CSR Prevention – not pink ribbons – best cure for breast cancer Occupational risk factors still 'largely overlooked, ' says expert BY LIZ BERNIER THERE'S NO SHORTAGE of pink merchandise that sells a promise that proceeds will go to- ward breast cancer research. But what exactly is "breast cancer research?" Where are those proceeds really going? Not, it would seem, toward re- search around the prevention of workplace risk factors for breast cancer, said Jim Brophy, occu- pational health researcher at the University of Windsor in Ontar- io, adding it's an area of research that is "woefully neglected." "We firmly believe that re- search into preventable causes of breast cancer has to be given a much higher priority than it is getting. Unfortunately, the fo- cus — the scarce research into prevention that is being done — is primarily looking at the in- dividual lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, smoking and al- cohol use — in other words, vol- untary factors to which personal responsibility can be assigned," he said. "But these factors can't ac- count for the majority of cases. In fact, there is evidence that there are likely multiple interacting factors, including environmental exposures and timing of expo- sure, that may be significant con- tributors." Study highlights hazards Brophy and his partner and fel- low researcher, Margaret Keith, conducted two studies into oc- cupational risk factors for breast cancer. One of the studies, re- leased in 2012, was a large case- control study that took six years to complete. Published in the journal En- vironmental Health, it studied 1,006 women with breast can- cer and 1,146 randomly selected women from the community who did not have breast cancer. The central finding? "A number of occupations were found to increase breast cancer risk," said Brophy, adding that there's mounting evidence many different occupational fac- tors may substantially increase the risk. Overall, there was an increase in breast cancer risk of 42 per cent among women across all occupations and industries who were highly exposed to either mammary carcinogens or en- docrine disrupters, found the study. Women who worked in farm- ing had a 36 per cent increase in breast cancer risk, while the risk more than doubled for women working in bars and gambling fa- cilities such as casinos and race- tracks, said Brophy. "A 73 per cent increase in risk was found in the metalworking sector… and the risk more than doubled for women working in the food canning sector, as well as for women working in auto- motive plastics manufacturing," he added. There were also some impor- tant findings about pre-meno- pausal women, who generally have a much lower risk for devel- oping breast cancer. "The risk of developing breast cancer before menopause was more than 400 per cent higher for women who worked in auto- motive plastics, and the risk was more than 500 per cent higher for those who worked in food canning," said Brophy. Brophy and Keith also con- ducted a qualitative study to better understand the exposures workers had in these settings. That research, which took about three years to complete, gathered descriptive information through focus groups with more than 150 individuals who had worked in occupations such as farming, auto manufacturing, health care, dental, metalworking and hair- dressing, said Keith. "We heard from pretty much every occupational group… that they very much feared job loss. And this fear has had a chilling effect on efforts to gain health and safety improvements." 'It's never just one thing' One of the reasons occupational factors that might contribute to breast cancer are often over- looked is because many assume breast cancer is genetic, or due to behavioural factors, said Charlotte Brody, vice-presi- dent of health initiatives at the BlueGreen Alliance in Minne- apolis, Minn. "Almost everybody who's ever talked about breast cancer talks about the breast cancer gene, and (that's a) tiny fraction of the breast cancer story," she said, as genetics account for only a small proportion of breast cancer cau- sation. "If you want to talk about pre- venting breast cancer, you have to talk about what are the fac- tors that add up to breast cancer? And what can we do to minimize those factors?" she said. "It's never just one thing that makes you sick — not for breast cancer and really probably for anything else. It's always a com- bination of factors that makes you sick." It can be stress, it can be night shift work, it can be radiation, it can be having benign breast disease and it can be chemicals. And it's the combination of fac- tors that tips the balance be- tween health and disease, said Brody. The concept of risk is central to this issue, said Keith. Construction workers promote the start of Breast Cancer Awareness month with pink hard hats in a ribbon formation. Some experts argue funds should go to prevention through awareness of workplace risk factors. Credit: Mike Blake/Reuters EMPLOYERS < pg. 6

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