Canada’s Supreme Court ruled on June 24 that breast cancer can be considered work-related under the country’s workers’ compensation law. Three women who were employed as lab technicians at a hospital in British Columbia argued that the hormone-mimicking chemicals in their workplace was a factor in developing breast cancer.
The OHS Section’s annual meeting at APHA brings together the best of public health: solid research, community-based methods, policy and politics, social justice and solidarity.
In the span of just a couple years, five of Heather Buren’s colleagues at the San Francisco Fire Department were diagnosed with breast cancer. At first, Buren thought the diagnoses were part of the unfortunate toll that comes with age. Still, something felt amiss — “it just felt so disproportionate to me,” she said.
Next time someone asks you what exactly public health does, repeat this number: 4.3 million. That’s the number of women — mothers, sisters, wives, aunts, grandmothers, daughters and friends — who might have otherwise gone without timely breast and cervical cancer screenings if it weren’t for public health and its commitment to prevention.
Two recently published papers funded by the federal agency Health Canada report on excess risk of breast cancer among auto plastics workers and the chemical compounds and processes used that are the likely culprits.
Here’s an important public health fact: women with dense breast tissue are at least four times more likely to develop breast cancer. I wish I’d known about that risk factor before learning last month that I have Stage IIIB breast cancer.