Cancer and the Environment Webinar Series Launch

There is robust scientific evidence of increased risk of cancer associated with chemical exposures in the environment, which highlights the critical need for a systems approach to cancer prevention. Dr. Ted Schettler will open this webinar with a discussion of the multifactorial, multi-level origins of cancer, highlighting the importance of considering the entire cancer-related exposome, across the life-course and identifying opportunities to reduce cancer risk not only through individual behavioral changes, but also through public policy interventions.

Dr. Barbara Cohn will then review some of the evidence for effects of environmental chemicals in pregnancy on cancer and cancer risk. Dr. Cohn will discuss the intersection between health disparities and environmental chemical exposure, as well as the importance of windows of susceptibility for exposures during development, and proof of concept studies for 3-generation effects of environmental exposures to pregnant women. Emerging evidence on current chemicals of concern, including per and poly per-fluorinated substances (PFAS) and the promise of new big data and ’omics will also be discussed with examples given. To conclude her presentation, Dr. Cohn will address opportunities for transdisciplinary collaboration to speed finding evidence needed for public health action.

Dr. Polly Hoppin will conclude presenting an overview of how cancer prevention research and practice largely focuses on three overlapping areas that envision the individual patient and her provider as the agents of change: precision prevention (e.g., genetic, social and other factors specific to an individual patient); genetics; and health behaviors. She will then discuss a fourth realm of prevention research and practice, targeting environmental and social factors over which the individual has little control, while governments, businesses, and communities do. These include environmental carcinogens in consumer products, workplaces, and air, water, and soil pollution. Dr. Hoppin will discuss what actions impede and hold promise for reducing exposure to environmental carcinogens at the scale needed and how a systems approach informs cancer prevention research and practice.

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[simon]

This is - generally, except see my above comment - excellent. Many thanks for contributing to moving the societal focus on cancer away from the siren promise of the "cure" to prevention - and raising awareness that all cancer is triggered by external toxicants (even if inherited) which, if society were so minded, we could move to control. The question is, what can we do to make that happen? And are the same toxicants driving the insect apocalypse and the collapse of the human sperm count by two thirds since 1950?