A news account distributed by the Associated Press last October wouldn't concede even that much to chlorine manufacturers. It's time to focus on prevention by eliminating the sources of chemical pollution that contribute to the breast cancer epidemic. The Greenpeace study doesn't say, although one of the organochlorines it cites, dioxin, invites just such a question. What was missing then, and what's missing now in the chlorine controversy is science. The recent spate of stories mentioned above quotes scientists sparingly or not at all.
None quotes peer-reviewed articles.
Instead, each attempts to cover the scientific issues related to chlorine as though they were merely political. First talk to the regulators. Then talk to environmentalist critics. But this sort of balance is unenlightening to the reader given that none of these sources is qualified to speak to the scientific merits of the controversy. A subsequent study in the same journal suggested a positive association between consumption of chlorination by-products in drinking water and bladder and rectal cancer in humans.