Cliff Stearns: “sadly, I am not surprised by an article in last Friday's Washington Post regarding yet another environmental health…”

“sadly, I am not surprised by an article in last Friday's Washington Post regarding yet another environmental health risk. The article discusses a new scientific study showing major health risk posed by chemicals commonly found in our environment. Despite even the best of intentions, a number of unnerving health trends are being linked with increased human contamination by chemical hormones. The chemicals responsible for causing endocrine system dysfunctions have been used in common pesticides and industrial chemicals for decades. Known as environmental estrogens, these chemicals can actually mimic the hormone estrogen that naturally occurs in the human body. These synthetic hormones have the capacity to severely alter one's endocrine system, leading to an increased risk of major health problems, including breast cancer. Breast cancer is expected to strike over 180,000 American women in 1996, and the lifetime risk for the disease has increased from a 1 in 20 chance in the 1950's to a 1 in 8 chance today. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death of women between the ages of 35 and 52, and 70 percent of newly diagnosed cases have no family history of this deadly cancer. Environmental estrogens are largely responsible for these alarming figures. A recent study by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine showed that women with high exposures to DDT had four times the breast cancer risk of women with low exposures.”