The Breast Cancer Fund Praises Governor Davis for Signing Environmental Health Tracking Bill

Breast Cancer Fund
Friday, 5 October 2001

SB 702 an "Excellent First Step" Towards Documenting Environmental Link to Chronic Disease

Sacramento, CA -- The Breast Cancer Fund (TBCF) today praised Governor Gray Davis for signing SB 702 - a bill that establishes the first-ever comprehensive statewide surveillance system for environmental health. The bill, authored by Senator Martha Escutia, creates an environmental health database to track chronic diseases like breast cancer and monitor patterns and trends across the state.

"We need to understand where, how and why diseases like breast cancer occur if we are to develop effective strategies for eradicating them," said Jeanne Rizzo, Executive Director of The Breast Cancer Fund. "This bill is an excellent first step towards finding the causes of chronic diseases, and we thank Senator Martha Escutia and Governor Davis for making this bill a reality."

The new database will enable state agencies, led by The Department of Health Services and the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, to track chronic diseases across the state and explore linkages with environmental factors, including toxic chemicals, hormone-mimicking compounds, and other suspected carcinogens. It will also provide opportunities to see if there are connections between a particular occupation and certain diseases.

Today, breast cancer is the leading cause of death for American women ages 25 to 55, and the second leading cause of cancer death for all American women. This has not always been the case. The incidence of breast cancer in the US has more than doubled in the past 30 years. In 1964, the lifetime risk was 1 in 20, while today it is 1 in 8. A growing body of evidence suggests that exposure to toxic chemicals may accelerate the spread of the disease and contributes to the disproportionately high risk faced by women in regions like the San Francisco Bay Area.

"As the number of women diagnosed with breast cancer rises, it is imperative to learn what is causing this disease and to take action to prevent it," Rizzo said. "We have a right to know what is making us sick."

The California Environmental Health Tracking System created by this bill will:

- Track the relationship between chronic diseases, like breast cancer, and environmental exposures,

- Assess how environmental toxins harm human health, including the development of chronic diseases,

- Develop strategies to prevent the future occurrence of these health threats,

- Measure the effectiveness of prevention strategies, and

- Generate hypotheses that may lead to new scientific knowledge about the causes of, and most effective ways to fight, chronic diseases.

For more information, or to contact Breast Cancer Fund, see their website at: www.breastcancerfund.org