September 12, 2023 – New research links living with high levels of air pollution to an increased risk of breast cancer.
Women who lived in areas with high levels of air pollution had an 8% higher risk of developing the disease in comparison with women who lived in areas with lower levels of air pollution. The Insights were published on Monday within the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
“Although this is a relatively modest increase, these results are significant considering that air pollution is a pervasive burden that affects almost everyone,” said study creator Alexandra White, PhD, an environmental and cancer expert on the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences A opinion. “These results add to the growing body of scientific evidence suggesting that air pollution is linked to breast cancer.”
More than 500,000 people were recruited within the mid-Nineteen Nineties. The study included men and ladies who were members of the American Association of Retired Persons (now AARP) and lived in one in every of six states or one in every of two metropolitan areas. The states were California, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and the cities were Atlanta and Detroit. They accomplished follow-up questionnaires in 2004 and 2005.
During the 20-year follow-up period, there have been 15,780 cases of breast cancer in nearly 200,000 women who had no history of the disease. The researchers analyzed the ladies's air pollution exposure within the 10 to fifteen years before they participated within the study based on national air quality data near their homes.
In particular, the researchers checked out a sort of air pollution called particulate matter, which is a combination of solid particles and liquid droplets present in the air. Fine dust will be grouped by the scale of the particles, and for the study, researchers focused on PM2.5 pollution, which is so small it may well be inhaled deep into the lungs. According to the authors, sources of PM2.5 pollution include motorized vehicle exhaust, burning coal or oil, wood smoke and industrial emissions.
The study also showed that exposure to high levels of particulate matter was significantly related to a sort of breast cancer called hormone-positive breast cancer. The researchers said their data was unable to point an increased level of risk based on the geographic area through which someone lived, but their results showed that this may very well be a very important area of future study.
A limitation of the study, in line with the authors, was that almost all of the ladies of their evaluation were older and postmenopausal.
According to this, roughly 240,000 women and a pair of,100 men are diagnosed with breast cancer within the USA yearly CDC.