ENDROCRINE DISRUPTION CHEMICALS AND BREAST AND PROSTATE CANCER

Breast and prostate cancer, which are considered to be hormone-related cancers, are among the commonest cancers affecting women and men respectively throughout the developed world. The incidence of both cancers in all age groups has risen since the 1960s and over the same time period human exposure to endocrine – sometimes known as hormone-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) – in the environment and diet has increased. The suggestion of a possible link between EDCs and hormone related illnesses, including breast and prostate cancer, has been considered by the European Environment Agency and the Royal Society. EDCs entering the environment include many chemicals for which production and use began between the 1930s and 1950s. Many EDCs are of concern because of their (or their metabolites), persistence in the environment, their large-scale transport and global circulation and distillation, and their bioaccumulation up the food chain so that they become concentrated in animal products including fat meat and milk. As well as being a source of natural EDCs, some foods may also be important pathways for synthetic EDCs in the environment. Unfortunately, few data exist on the concentration and distribution of EDCs in the environment except at an extremely coarse scale, and even high-risk areas may not have been identified in many countries. With its extensive digital databases on ground and surface water, stream and coastal sediments, soil systems and land use patterns and research into bioavailability and speciation modelling, environmental geochemistry has much to contribute to such studies.