Traffic pollution ups breast cancer risk

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OTTAWA: As per new research, air pollution may raise the chances of women of getting breast cancer.

Air pollution, which has already been associated to various health troubles,

A ground breaking new study suggests pollution from traffic is associated with the risk of breast cancer.

The research has been carried out by scientists from McGill University (Drs. Goldberg, Dan Crouse and Nancy Ross), The Research Institute of the MUHC (RI MUHC; Dr. Mark Goldberg) and Universite de Montréal (Dr. France Labreche).

According to the study's co-author Dr. Mark Goldberg, a researcher at The RI MUHC, "We've been watching breast cancer rates go up for some time. Nobody really knows why, and only about one third of cases are attributable to known risk factors. Since no-one had studied the connection between air pollution and breast cancer using detailed air pollution maps, we decided to investigate it."

Dr. Goldberg and his fellow workers drew near to the problem by merging facts from different researches.

Initially, they utilized the results of their 2005-2006 research to set up two air pollution "maps" depiction NO2 levels in various regions of Montreal in the year 1996 and 10 years earlier in 1986.

After that, they graphed the home addresses of females having breast cancer in a 1996-97 research onto the air pollution maps.

Their discoveries were surprising. The breast cancer rate was clearly higher in regions having high air pollution levels.

Dr. Goldberg said, "We found a link between post-menopausal breast cancer and exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is a ''marker'' for traffic-related air pollution."

"Across Montreal, levels of NO2 varied between 5 ppb to over 30 ppb. We found that risk increased by about 25 per cent with every increase of NO2 of five parts per billion. Another way of saying this is that women living in the areas with the highest levels of pollution were almost twice as likely to develop breast cancer as those living in the least polluted areas," Dr. Goldberg added.

He also said that these alarming outcomes must be interpreted with great caution.

The results of the research have been released in the prestigious journal Environmental Health Perspectives.