INCREASED RISK OF BREAST CANCER BY THE USE OF CLEANING PRODUCTS

According to AFP, Women who use more cleaning products like air fresheners or antifungal, may have a greater risk of developing breast cancer than those who use them in moderation, has discovered a group of researchers from the Silent Spring Institute in the United States through a survey of more than 1,500 women, published in ‘Environmental Health’.

The team of researchers led by Julia Brody, Silent Spring Institute, conducted telephone interviews with 787 women diagnosed with breast cancer.
As Brody noted, “women who admitted using a larger number of cleaning products tended to have twice the risk of developing breast cancer compared with those who claimed to make the least use.”

“Using products to end freshening and with fungi is associated with increased risk. To our knowledge, this would be the first published report on cleaning products and the risk of breast cancer, he says.

The researchers asked women about the cleaning products they used, on what they thought they could produce and breast cancer risk factors. They found that cleaning products, air fresheners and insect repellents were associated with this cancer. However, there was little relationship between this disease and the general use of pesticides.

Women with breast cancer who believed that chemicals and pollution contribute “a lot” to increase the risk of developing this condition were more likely to recognize that they used many of these products.

“When women are diagnosed with breast cancer often think about what happened in the past that might have contributed to the emergence of this disease. Thus, it may be that women with breast cancer more accurately recall the products have used, even more than usual “he says.

“It can also be – adds the researcher – the experience of breast cancer influenced the beliefs about their causes in these women. For example, women diagnosed with cancer are less likely to believe that heredity contributes” a lot “because in most cases is the first time in his family to see this disease.”