"Although we've made great strides in improving treatment and breast cancer survival rates, really we don't know much about preventing breast cancer... and most of the causes are not well understood," she said, noting hypotheses that environmental exposure affects breast development and the risk of disease.
"People are exposed to dozens of chemicals in their daily activities and biomonitoring has detected hundreds of chemicals in the fetal cord blood, in breast milk, adult blood and urine."
Only around a quarter of more than 186,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 were genetically predisposed to the disease, and other breast cancer risk factors, including the early onset puberty in girls, have been linked to chemicals.
Source-AFP
SRM