HEAL welcomes breast cancer initiative

The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) has welcomed the recommendations set out in Breast Cancer UK’s ‘Prevention is better than cure: 5 pledges for 2015 and beyond’.

HEAL is especially concerned about the need to improve the EU regulation of chemicals – which sets the parameters for national laws and policies. A forthcoming new strategy on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) has been delayed since causing huge disappointment in the environmental health community.

HEAL Senior Policy Advisor Lisette van Vliet said: “We welcome Breast Cancer UK’s challenge to the UK Government ‘to stop breast cancer before it starts’. In May this year, a group of the world’s leading scientific experts on endocrine disrupting chemicals made the strongest ever call for swift regulatory action.  Their Berlaymont Declaration says that “scientific uncertainty should not delay regulatory action and commercial interests must not take precedent over concerns about risks associated with endocrine disruptors.

"The scientists noted that breast cancer was rising rapidly in eastern and southern European EU countries and that in Western Europe although the increases are slower or levelling off, the rates are much higher than 30 years ago. We think ‘better safe than sorry’ should apply across the EU as soon as possible. More and more people are asking: why wait for more evidence before taking action?”

Some years ago, HEAL/CHEM Trust published a brochure entitled Breast Cancer: Preventing the preventable, Exposure to certain man-made chemicals may be contributing to the breast cancer epidemic. Based on a review of evidence prepared by Professor Andreas Kortenkamp, University of Brunel who will be speaking at the event in London today, the report concluded: “Given the known role of oestrogens in breast cancer, it would be prudent to reduce exposures to chemicals that can mimic oestrogen.”

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