HOW ARE EVERYDAY CHEMICALS, HORMONES AND BREAST CANCER INTERRELATED?

Edited by, JASPER VICTORIA

Most or all of the products we use in our day to day life such as pharmaceutical products, food preservatives, cosmetics, insecticides or chemical fertilizers, etc.,  contains or are composed of chemicals. Apart from serving their purpose, certain chemicals also pave way for health hazards to our body gradually or all of a sudden, directly being toxic or through indirect pathways by modifying the endogenous substances in the body.

Though the FDA and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) test the chemicals in the products to control the presence of their toxic levels before approval, They listed 2000 chemicals in order to be screened for their unexplored relationship with health hazards that maybe incident upon use.

They established how certain chemicals are related to increase in hormone levels and breast cancer. 296 chemicals out of the 2000 were found to increase the female sex hormones either estradiol or progesterone. and 70 of them increased both the hormones. 

The following are some of the chemicals that are used in our day to day life and are found to increase both estradiol and progesterone and are associated with breast cancer:

1,2-Diphenylhydrazine which is a component of dyes, pharmaceutical products, and hydrogen peroxide.

Organophosphate insecticides such as Malathion and Phosmet which are used for mosquito control and pest control in apple trees.

Oxyfluorfen, which is a herbicide used for weed control in agriculture.

These chemicals are known to bind to the estrogen receptors and hence increase the production of estrogen or progesterone and result in breast cancer due the activation of the synthesis of endogenous estradiol or progesterone. The breast cancer patients were also ER-positive.

The Hormone replacement therapy  containing progesterone, progestin and estrogen and also the drug class of aromatase inhibitors increased the risk for breast cancer.

These environmental, household and agricultural chemicals are also associated with a similar increase in hormone levels and breast cancer.

The study found out the additional risks for the carcinogenesis of breast cancer in order to regulate these chemicals to be safely used.