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Environmental litigator, and 2006 “Trial Lawyer of the Year: Al Meyerhoff is worried by a new study from the Silent Spring Institute which identified studies on chemicals that might post a breast cancer risk for women by way of tests on laboratory animals. As Meyerhoff wrote in the Huffington Post:

“An increasing consensus has emerged, also according to the report, that most cancers are from the environment (including diet), not from our genetic make-up. Moreover, many of these 200 or so toxic substances are mutagenic, causing genetic mutations threatening future generations. And when toxic chemicals interact, through what scientists call synergy or potentiation, their risks can increase by a factor of 100 or more.

Environmentally-induced cancers are the result of human failure. This failure is because of a misguided War on Cancer - focusing too much on the cancer result and not the cause - as well as the continued industry addiction by agriculture and others to toxic agents. Fundamentally, it also reflects a failed regulatory regime coupled with antiquated and ineffective toxic chemical control laws in the United States.”

Meyehoff ends by slamming California’s agency for listing such carcinogens for its

“refusal to ever "expedite" consideration of PFOA, the stuff of Teflon which a panel of U.S. EPA scientists has already concluded is "likely" to cause cancer in humans. So we wait, and while we do, many of us contract this dreaded disease.”

But the question is, how good a grasp does 2006’s “Trial Lawyer of the Year” have of science? Or of regulation? The EPA has not, for instance, concluded that PFOA (which by the way, is a precursor chemical to Teflon, not “the stuff of” Teflon) is a “likely” carcinogen. That recommendation came from the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to the risk assessment panel on PFOA. And, as the risk assessment has not yet been completed, the EPA has not formally agreed to accept the recommendation of the SAB.

Moreover, the designation that PFOA should be considered a “likely” carcinogen was based, not on actual evidence that it does cause cancer in humans, but on the possibility that there was another mode of action by which PFOA at extremely high doses might cause a type of liver tumor in rats. The draft risk assessment had concluded that PFOA was a “suggestive” cancer based on the fact that the mode of action by which it did cause liver tumors (at levels impossible for a human to ingest) did not apply to humans.

The question of how relevant animal studies of possible carcinogens are to humans is one neatly sidestepped by Meyerhoff, but it was tackled head on by the Los Angeles Times coverage of the Silent Spring study.

“The animal carcinogen database is not meant as a guideline for the general public to avoid certain chemicals, the authors say. But some researchers think the public might take it that way — and place more stock in it than they should.

‘It's alarming," says epidemiologist Leslie Bernstein of USC. "I'd rather not see [the chemical database] highlighted because we don't have that much information. I don't want women to think if they spray their lawns, they're going to get cancer. Because we don't know….’

… It is important to remember that rodent studies don't always extrapolate to humans, Bernstein says. In fact, different strains of rodents can yield different results in studies, says breast cancer researcher Chris Portier of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C. For example, one rat strain might be more likely than another to get tumors as it ages.

Also, almost any researcher will point out that the way chemicals are tested in animals — by exposing the rodents to high levels they'd never encounter in real life — brings up uncertainty.”

And whereas Meyerhoff seems to claiming that breast cancer is primarily an environmental disease, the American Cancer Society (ACS) points out that

“So far, studies have not been able to identify any chemical in the environment or in our diets that is likely to cause these mutations, or a subsequent breast cancer. The cause of most acquired mutations remains unknown.”

The ACS recommends that the risk of breast cancer can be reduced for average women (women who do not have genetic mutations making them susceptible to the disease) by giving birth to several children, breast-feeding them, avoiding alcohol, exercising regularly, and staying slim.

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