Cancer Is an Environmental Problem

[Mr. Wayne]

?“In my experience, the attitude of most clinicians and cancer researchers
is that environmental causes of cancer are not very important. That was
certainly my attitude.” This was how doctor and cancer researcher Margaret
Kripke began her presentation at the Cancer and Environment Forum in
March. The forum, held jointly by several major U.S. cancer research
centers, was meant to inform practicing clinicians about the everyday
exposures that can increase a person’s likelihood of developing cancer.
?“My outlook on this subject changed very dramatically when I was a member
of the President’s Cancer Panel,” said Kripke, who served on the panel in
2010. That year, the panel produced its first ever report on environmental
causes of cancer. Kripke continued, ?“What I learned from this exercise
was absolutely shocking to me.”

That 2010 report found that environmental exposures play a larger role in
cancer formation than once believed by clinicians, and that these cancer
risks are especially dangerous to children. Since then, researchers have
narrowed their estimate: 70% to 90% of cancer development is driven by
non-genetic, environmental factors. These can be factors like smoking or
diet, but, as Kripke and her colleagues are focused on, also things like
air quality and repetitive exposure to chemicals used in workplaces and
homes.

In February of this year, President Joe Biden announced the relaunching of
Cancer Moonshot, a funding initiative he originally spearheaded while vice
president in 2016. The relaunch aims to gain congressional support around
the goal of cutting cancer death rates in the United States in half in the
next 25 years. The role of environmental risk factors is being
acknowledged in this effort: The relaunching included the formation of an
advisory ?“Cancer Cabinet,” which includes representatives from agencies
like the Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration.
In his March State of the Union Address, Biden acknowledged the probable
role that toxic smoke from military burn pits played in his own son’s
cancer, and announced a Veterans Affairs rule streamlining access to
medical care for veterans with cancers that research has linked to these
pits.

But in the President’s proposed 2023 budget, no funds were earmarked for
the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the
leading agency in researching environmental cancer risks, responsible for
breakthroughs in toxicology research methods. Its parent agency, the
National Institutes of Health, which houses 27 other institutes and
centers including NIEHS, only received an overall $275 million increase in
discretionary funding in the proposed budget. Ruthann Rudel of the Silent
Spring Institute, a breast cancer research center that receives NIEHS
funding, says that money for research on environmental causes of cancer is
sorely needed. The studies are complex, requiring large samples of
participants, followed for years at a time, to understand the consequences
of being exposed.

A difficulty in performing this research is that basic information about
potential carcinogens is missing. Kripke, who serves on the Silent Spring
Institute’s board of directors, attributes this lack of information to the
under-regulation of the industries that produce these chemicals in the
first place. ?“We in this country operate on the basis of something called
the reactionary principle for chemical production,” Kripke explains. ?“If
it causes harm, then we regulate it, or remove it from the marketplace.”

But proving harm in the absence of regulation can be an uphill battle.
That’s the challenge that the community of east Oakland, Calif. faced. At
the end of last year, Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), an
environmental justice group, sued a local facility, AB&I Foundry, over its
emission of hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen. While residents have
been vocal about the high rates of health issues in their community, the
lawsuit against the foundry was only possible after the passage of a local
air quality district rule that required the district to assess all the
health risks posed by the entire facility, rather than only the parts
being regulated. That assessment found that the largest cancer risk AB&I
Foundry produced was hexavalent chromium pollution being vented into the
atmosphere. The machinery that produced the hexavalent chromium was exempt
from permitting at the time of installation, and thus its pollution had
never been officially tracked.

Until this, the only carcinogenic pollution officially being monitored
from the foundry was lead. Esther Goolsby, an organizer with CBE, says
that even though she worked at the foundry, she was not aware of what she
and other workers were being exposed to until she joined CBE. ?“And
knowing, only when I got older, what was there, and reflecting just on how
it affects my children when growing up, and then all of the community that
was there. And there are two elementaries, and a library. So, thinking
about how long this has been going on — and we’re only just now getting
action.”

The air quality district’s assessment would have been the first step in a
multi-year process of bringing all of AB&I Foundry’s operations into
regulation. Tyler Earl, a lawyer for CBE, says that the organization was
pushing for the foundry to install abatement technology on the machinery
to reduce its pollution. Instead, in March of this year, AB&I Foundry
announced that it would be moving its entire operation to Texas. CBE did
not interpret this is a win: Goolsby’s response was, ?“In Texas, they’re
just going to go to another community and put toxins there.” AB&I Foundry
cited increasing regulatory standards for its move. Earl said that the
decision ?“underscored the importance of a just transition for workers at
facilities such as this where the communities — particularly the black and
brown folks who surround industrial facilities — have been paying the
price for companies’ profits.”

Historically, environmental cancer risks were studied in unionized
industrial settings, Rudel says, which often had centralized healthcare,
detailed employment records, and advocates for workers, all of which
fostered collaboration with research teams. But last year, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics reported that only about one in 10 working Americans
belonged to a union, a record low.

Worker organizing in any form still plays an essential role in the success
and continuation of public health research. For example, Rudel co-leads
the Women Workers Biomonitoring Collaborative, a research collaboration
that studies occupational cancer risks for female firefighters, nurses and
office workers. She attributes the collaboration’s existence to the
employee advocacy groups that were the first to raise alarm bells about
cancer similarities in coworkers. ?“But for many situations where people
are exposed, including at work,” Rudel warns, ?“we don’t have that, and we
will never have that. And so, we’ll never be able to study what came of
those exposures.”

Deysi Flores, an organizer for the nonprofit Make the Road New York
(MRNY), co-leads the Safe and Just Cleaners research partnership, which
produces research on the health risks posed to household cleaners by
cleaning products. Flores says that where the organization’s studies
struggle to find funding is for all the associated programming and
workplace advocacy that keeps workers engaged in the study. When
organizing participants for Safe and Just Cleaners, in a profession often
paid under the table, MRNY faced the challenge of connecting undocumented
participants with preventative healthcare, so that they then could even
participate in the research.

After that organizing experience, MRNY made universal healthcare coverage
in New York a policy priority. Flores says, ?“What we see in the
communities that we represent is that the most vulnerable workers are day
laborers, those who are not having the most ideal worker protections. That
means we must do a better job to include those workers into these
processes of regulating the safety of the workplace.”

https://inthesetimes.com/article/cancer-moonshot-biden-environmental-
problem-pollution-research