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Breast Cancer and Asbestos Exposure

Breast cancer is currently the most common form of cancer affecting women in the United States. The cancer rarely affects men. More than 211,000 American women are diagnosed with breast cancer annually and nearly 90% of breast cancer patients will survive through their cancer at least five years.

This form of cancer develops in breast tissue from either the ducts (the most common form of breast cancer) or the lobules (the glands that produce milk). Medical professionals and researchers are not yet entirely clear on why breast cancer develops in some but not in others, or exactly why it develops predominantly in women and rarely in men.

The direct causes may not be fully understood yet, but risk factors for breast cancer have been identified. Risk factors for breast cancer include but are not limited to personal and family history of cancer, age, ethnicity, reproductive and menstrual history, lack of physical activity, breast density, and consumption of alcohol.

A number of these risk factors, such as consumption of alcohol and lack of physical activity, can be personally managed and controlled by an individual, but other potential risk factors such as genetics, age and exposure to toxins cannot always be controlled or avoided. One such toxin that has been researched as a potential risk factor for breast cancer is the mineral asbestos. The naturally occurring mineral asbestos was once extensively used in thousands of products and people who worked with asbestos are at greater risk of developing more common asbestos-related cancers such as pleural mesothelioma or lung cancer.

The Potential Link Between Breast Cancer and Asbestos Exposure

Published in 1975 in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine, the study "Prevalence of Asbestos Bodies in a Necropsy Series in East London" conducted a necropsy series that evaluated the presence of asbestos fibers and recorded associations with asbestos prevalence and patients’ sex, domiciliary address, occupation, industry and diseases recorded at necropsy.

The study excluded asbestos factory workers and patients with asbestosis or mesothelioma, including pleural mesothelioma. Of the 178 women studied, 30 percent had asbestos bodies and of the 216 men studied, 42 percent had asbestos bodies in the lungs as well. The results of the study showed an increased amount of asbestos was present in women with breast cancer and in males with stomach cancer (which bears a stronger causal relationship to asbestos exposure). The authors of the study proposed there was an unlikely potential for asbestos fibers to be carried by lymphatic flow from the lungs to the chest wall, where they could cause cellular damage.

The potential for a causal relationship between asbestos exposure and breast cancer is extremely small, but this study found an increased amount of asbestos in women with breast cancer and further research would be required to better understand the potential for asbestos exposure to have a connection to breast cancer risk.

Sources

1. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/breast
2. http://www.breastcancer.org/
3. http://ww5.komen.org/
4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1008017/