Circadian Disruption and Breast Cancerписьмо
Аннотация: To the Editor: Statements about recent breast cancer trends made by Stevens1 to provide support for a possible association between breast cancer risk and environmental exposures (particularly nighttime electrical lighting) related to increased industrialization, are either misleading or incorrect. On page 254, Stevens states that breast cancer risk “is increasing everywhere” and on page 257 he states that “successive birth cohorts of women have higher levels of risk throughout their lives beginning early in life.”1 The first claim is not even true for all U.S. women; breast cancer rates have been decreasing in young U.S. women for several decades.2,3 The second claim is refuted by a marked decrease in birth cohort risk for U.S., Canadian, and Scottish women born after World War II.4–7 This decrease in birth cohort risk of breast cancer among women born after 1946 (ie, so-called baby boomers) is contrary to trends in most known or proposed risk factors for breast cancer,5,7 including, it would seem, increasing exposure to electric lighting, electromagnetic fields (EMFs), or any other marker of increased industrialization (early in life, or at any age). It appears that unexplained factors correlated with increasing industrialization have exerted a profound protective effect against breast cancer, and identifying these factors should be a priority in breast cancer research. In previous publications, Stevens and colleagues hypothesized that a causal link between electric power use and breast cancer might result from EMFs, as well as light at night.8–10 There is increasing evidence that EMFs have little, if any, effect on melatonin levels in humans,10–12 and recent large epidemiologic studies indicate that thereis no association between EMF exposureand increased breast cancer risk.13–17 Thus it appears unlikely that there is a causal association between EMF exposure and breast cancer risk. Robert E. Tarone International Epidemiology Institute Rockville, MD [email protected]
Год издания: 2005
Авторы: Robert E. Tarone
Издательство: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Источник: Epidemiology
Ключевые слова: Air Quality and Health Impacts, Health, Environment, Cognitive Aging, Electromagnetic Fields and Biological Effects
Другие ссылки: Epidemiology (HTML)
journals.lww.com (HTML)
PubMed (HTML)
journals.lww.com (HTML)
PubMed (HTML)
Открытый доступ: bronze
Том: 16
Выпуск: 5
Страницы: 710–711