The Environmental Protection Agency found that U.S. counties with hazardous waste sites were 6.5 times more likely to have elevated breast cancer rates than counties that did not have such sites. Other groups have provided evidence from different perspectives. Women working in the petroleum, chemical, pharmaceutical, and electrical equipment manufacturing industries had significantly higher rates of breast cancer than the general public,'' says the report. A 1997 World Health Organisation report predicts that the number of cancer deaths throughout the world will double in most countries over the next 25 years. Breast cancer is listed as one of the top killers and, while breast cancer rates are rapidly rising in developing countries, activists point out that rates are higher in industrialised countries.
Japan provides interesting proof of the link between industrial pollution and breast cancer.
During the past two to three years, however, this rate has risen to 5.4 percent. Furthermore, Japanese women moving to North America reached U.S. national levels within one generation. Israel is another interesting example. A dramatic 30 percent drop in breast cancer rates was witnessed after Israel banned three cancer-causing pesticides, according to an official Israeli study. At the World Conference of Breast Cancer held last July in Canada, Bella Abzug, the director of WEDO and a former New York Congresswoman, said a global action plan on breast cancer will be presented to the United Nations before the end of the year. ''While it has taken governments decades to begin to respond to the link between smoking and cancer, women cannot wait several more decades for the appropriate bodies to take substantial and committed action on breast cancer,'' she said.