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Breast Cancer: Risk Factors and Prevention
By Roberta Attanasio Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. How can it be prevented? Let’s take a look at some of the answers available today (January 17, 2014). First of all, what is cancer prevention? According to the National Cancer Institute “Cancer prevention is action taken to lower the chance of getting cancer. By preventing cancer, the number of new cases of cancer in a group or population is lowered. Hopefully, this will lower the number of deaths caused by cancer.” A little more….. “To prevent new cancers from starting, scientists look at risk factors and protective factors. Anything that increases your chance of developing cancer is called a cancer…
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Cooking and Indoor Air Pollution
By Roberta Attanasio Cooking releases some of the same pollutants usually found outdoors in smog. Therefore, without proper ventilation, people can be exposed — indoors — to pollution able to cause serious adverse health effects. A study published in 2012 by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found that, in the United States, poor indoor air quality — of which cooking is the major source — is responsible for adverse health effects as significant as those caused by all traffic accidents or infectious diseases. The researchers highlighted the hazards posed by specific indoor air pollutants — secondhand smoke, radon, formaldehyde, acrolein and PM2.5, or particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers…
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Lifestyle Factors: Focus on Healthy Pregnancy
By Roberta Attanasio Too many times the medical field views pregnancy in terms of risks leading to potential problems for the mother, the baby, or both. Does it have to be so? Researchers from the UK, Ireland and New Zealand thought this may not be the case and shifted the focus of their research on pregnancy, from abnormality to normality. They carried out a study with the aim of highlighting factors that could be changed before pregnancy and, therefore, increase the likelihood of a normal outcome. Results from their study identified lifestyle factors either beneficial or detrimental for a normal pregnancy. Beneficial factors – factors that increased the likelihood of…
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Preterm Birth and Exposure to Environmental Pollutants
By Roberta Attanasio “Being born too soon is an unrecognized killer” – these are the words of Professor Joy Lawn, Director of the MARCH Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Senior Health Advisor to Save the Children. Professor Lawn is one of the co-editors of a 2012 seminal report entitled “Born too soon: the global action report on preterm birth.” Globally, more than 15 million babies are born prematurely (before 37 completed weeks of gestation) each year, with over a million neonatal deaths from complications of preterm birth. To reduce the global staggering numbers of preterm births, it is necessary to find ways to help…
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The Global Toll of Preterm Births
By Roberta Attanasio Too many babies are born too soon – not ready for life outside the womb – year after year. In May 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, Save the Children and the March of Dimes, published a report (Born too soon: the global action report on preterm birth) that included the first-ever estimates of preterm birth by country. At the time it was released, Dr. Joy Lawn, one of the report co-editors, said “Being born too soon is an unrecognized killer. Preterm births account for almost half of all newborn deaths worldwide and are now the second leading cause of death…
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Skin Lightening Cosmetics and Mercury Toxicity
By Roberta Attanasio Skin lightening cosmetics are popular in many regions of the world — they’re used to lighten darker skin because of their ability to inhibit production of melanin, the substance that gives the skin its color. The active ingredients in some of these cosmetics often include toxic chemicals, as for example hydroquinone, fluorinated corticosteroid and inorganic mercury. The World Health Organization (WHO) provides interesting facts about the global use of skin lightening cosmetics. In India, 61% of the dermatological market consists of skin lightening products. In Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Togo, 25%, 77%, 27%, 35% and 59% of women, respectively, are reported to use skin lightening products on a…
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A Small Molecule Repairs the Damage Caused by Nuclear Radiation
By Roberta Attanasio Invisible and often dangerous, nuclear radiation is all around us. It comes at low levels from natural sources – radon gas, the earth’s radioactive elements and cosmic rays – as well as from human activities. Testing of nuclear weapons, nuclear waste disposal and accidents at nuclear power plants increase our exposure to radiation – sometimes at very high doses. Nuclear disasters such as those at Chernobyl and Fukushima generate global fear and profound emotional responses, while radiation’s medical applications raise safety concerns despite their beneficial use. Because of our fear of all things nuclear, we might welcome a recent discovery. A group of researchers has shown that a small molecule protects from death…
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Global Pollution: Top Ten Toxic Threats in 2013
By The Editors A report released in 2012 by the Blacksmith Institute and Green Cross Switzerland pointed out that the disease burden of pollution is comparable in scope to that of more well-known public health threats, such as malaria or tuberculosis. The burden of disease measures the relative impact of different diseases and injuries on populations. As comparison, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), globally, there were about 219 million cases of malaria in 2010 and an estimated 660 000 deaths due to the disease, whereas in 2012 an estimated 8.6 million people developed tuberculosis and 1.3 million died from it. Yesterday (November 4, 2013), the Blacksmith Institute and Green Cross Switzerland published the 2013 report of…
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Breast Cancer: Prevention is Better than Cure
By The Editors The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) is a leading European not-for-profit organization addressing how the environment affects health in the European Union. With the support of more than 65 member organizations, HEAL brings independent expertise and evidence from the health community to different decision-making processes. According to HEAL, “the role that environmental factors play in cancer causation, specifically carcinogenic substances and other cancer-related chemicals, is increasingly recognized. Consequently, reducing exposure to hazardous substances is gaining prominence as a key approach to cancer prevention.” On October 23, 2013, HEAL member Breast Cancer UK (BCUK) launched its Manifesto ‘Prevention is better than cure: 5 pledges for 2015 and beyond’ calling on the…
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Unsafe Medical Care: Global Burden and Policy Needs
By Roberta Attanasio Accurate and meaningful information deriving from scientific evidence is essential to drive international health policy and improve global public health. However, in many instances and for a variety of reasons, translating health data into policy results problematic. To overcome these challenges, in the 1990s the Harvard School of Public Health, the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) developed a new concept – the Burden of Disease – to describe death and loss of health due to diseases, injuries and risk factors for all regions of the world. The Global Burden of Disease model is run by WHO and uses disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) to measure…
