Persisting on persistent carcinogens
There’s a public forum tomorrow, sponsored by Cancer Action, on chemicals and cancer, at the McKenney Middle School on State St. in Canton.
We reported on this subject — POPs, or persistent organic pollutants — early last summer, and quoted tomorrow evening’s keynote speaker, Dr. David Carpenter:
He’s director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at SUNY Albany. He says these organic pollutants pose special risks because they’re so durable. “The problem,” says Carpenter, “is they’re persistent and they’re fat soluble. And so they don’t really go away. So if you ate a contaminated meal last night, you’re going to have half those contaminants in your body ten years from now.”
That story came out when the state Health Department published an Internet-based map of cancer data by county. Check it out. And listen for more tomorrow on the 8 O’clock Hour.
Tags: environment, health
I agree with the American Cancer Society. The map is misleading. Cancer is strongly related to age.
http://www.nyhealth.gov/statistics/cancer/registry/age.htm
Also see “Misconceptions on Pollution and the Causes of Cancer”
http://potency.berkeley.edu/pdfs/Paustenbach.pdf
Second on NITV’s comment. Persistent Organic Pollutants are an important issue, but correlating them with cancer occurrences is almost impossible because a.) there are many types of cancer, with many underlying causes, and b.)we don’t have the data to demonstrate that low levels of POPs cause cancer, even with long term exposure.