However, other studies, by U.S. and Canadian scientists, have found that women with higher levels of organochlorines in their blood have four to ten times the risk of breast cancer than those with lower levels. These seemingly inconsistent results point to the need for long-term prospective studies on this issue. More research is needed to examine why the established risk factors increase a woman's vulnerability. However, additional and different research is needed to determine which of the thousands of chemicals in the environment cause the disease, and how. Most important, we must conduct long-term prospective studies that measure exposures to chemicals during critical windows of breast development.
Much research continues to be focused on the role of inherited gene defects.
The federal government has funded one multimillion-dollar, multiyear environmental research study, the Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project, to determine whether environmental contaminants increase breast cancer risk. But overall, funding for environmental research represents only a tiny fraction of the government's budget for disease research. Over the years, a growing movement has emerged calling for prevention-based research. In 1996, an advisory committee of scientists and experts established by the EPA recommended the creation of a program to test the toxicity and hormonal effects of 9,000 chemicals, as required under the Food Quality Protection Act. However, this program has been grossly underfunded.