Women concerned about breast cancer should worry less about cellphones and hair dyes and worry more about weighing or drinking too much, exercising too little, using hormones and getting too much radiation So says a new report on environmental risks by a respected panel of science advisers. By environment they mean everything not governed by genes - what's in the air and water but also diets, vitamin use and even things like working night shifts. And while they lament that most chemicals in consumer goods get little safety testing, they find too few studies in people to say whether there is a breast cancer risk from certain pesticides, cosmetics or bisphenol A, known as BPA and used in many plastics and canned food liners, although it has been eliminated from baby bottles and many reusable beverage containers in recent years. "We don't have enough data to say `toss your water bottles,'" said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, chief of environmental and occupational health at the University of California, Davis. She headed the Institute of Medicine panel - independent experts under the National Academy of Sciences who advise the government and others. The report sorts the evidence for higher breast cancer risk factors like this: -Yes: Hormone therapy combining estrogen and progestin, excess weight after menopause, alcohol consumption and radiation from too many medical tests, especially during childhood. The panel doesn't say how much radiation is too much, but says two or three abdominal CT scans give as much as atomic bomb survivors received. Mammograms use minuscule amounts and should not be avoided. Oral contraceptives slightly raise breast cancer risk while taken, although cancer rates are very low in the age groups that use them. -No: Hair dyes and the kind of radiation from cellphones, microwaves and electronic gadgets. -Probable: Smoking. -Possible: Secondhand smoke, nighttime shift work and exposure to benzene and a couple other chemicals through jobs or from breathing car fumes or pumping gas. It is "biologically plausible" that BPA and certain other plastics ingredients might affect estrogen, which fuels most breast cancers, but evidence is mostly in animals and lab tests - not enough to judge whether they harm people, the panel concluded.
