Blog 6- Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment

In this selection Sandra Steingraber analyses what is known and unknown about the relationship between environmental factors and cancer. She argues that we can do little to change our genetic inheritance, but much can be done to reduce human exposure to environmental carcinogens.
Sandra had bladder cancer as a young adult. She explains to people the study of cancer among correlations within adoptive families but not within biological ones. Families share environments as well as chromosomes, our genes work with substances from the ecological world. What runs in families does not necessarily run in blood.
Sandra's Aunt Jean died of bladder cancer. Her father's relatives, Raymond and Violet both died of colon cancer, and LeRoy is currently under treatment. Her Uncle Ed is now being treated for prostate cancer, her borther-in-law, Jeff who cleans chemical drums for a living, had intestinal cancer. Her mother survived metastatic cancer, although her mom's two doctors died of cancer. In 1974 women were propelled to doctors' offices in the result that a lot of women were diagnosed with breast cancer in a short period of time.
Sandra began collecting articles when an article caught her eye, an article called: Scientists Identify Gene Resposible For Human Bladder Cancer. Researchers who found how to transform normal mouse cells into cancerous ones, they then located the segment of DNA resposible for the transformation. The message sent out by this changed gene was utterly changed; guanine instead of thymine; valine instead of glycine. Also associated with transitional cell carcinomas are surplus numbers of growth factor receptors. Their overexpression has been linked to the kinds of gross genetic injuries that appear near the end of the malignant process. For example bladder carcinogens called aromatic amines- are present in contaminants in cigarette smoke, added to rubber, formulated in dyes for cloth, leather and paper; used in printing and color photography, and featured in the manufacture of certain pharmaceuticals and pesticides.
Aromatic amines are detoxifyed by the body through a process called acetylation: which more than half of Americans and Europens are estimated to be slow acetylators. Bladder carcinogens were among the earliest carcinogens ever identified.
Somewhat less than half of all bladder cancers among men and one-third of all cases among women are related to cigarette smoking. The rest comes from rivers, ground-water, dump sites, and indoor air. Little to nothing is known about how these substances behave in combination.

An obsession with genes and hereditary ones prevent us from adressing cancer's environmental roots. At 10% hereditary cancers are the rare exception. Therefore finding "cancer genes" is not going to prevent the vast majority of cancers that develop.
Genetic risks and consequences of these inheritances are that people become even more sensitive to environmental carcinogens.
Cancer incidence rates are not rising because new cancer genes are sprouting.
In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's knowledge leads us to reject those who claim there is simply no choice but to continue filling the world with poisons.
Exposures during young adulthood, adolescence, childhood, and prior to birth are relevent to our present cancer risks. Afterall, except for the original blueprint of our chromosomes, all the material that is us has come to us from the environment.
Even with the lowest value, 2% in the US die from environmentally caused cancers, this is more than the number of teenagers and children who die from firearms- which is a nationally considered issue.
The alternative presumes that toxic substances will not be used as long as there is the availability of a safer choices. Laws need to set legal maximum limits on toxics present in air, food, water, workplace, and consumer goods.