Preventing environmental problems and preventing cancer have never been mainstream ideas. Traditionally, government agencies have created programs to manage environmental problems and to try to cure cancer. But as Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Peter Montague tells us, the philosophy of prevention is beginning to catch on:
Transcript
Preventing environmental problems and preventing cancer have never been mainstream
ideas. Traditionally, government agencies have created programs to manage environmental problems
and to try to cure cancer. But as Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Peter Montague
tells us, the philosophy of prevention is beginning to catch on.
With all the fuss that’s being made about human genes these days, it is good to remember
that most cancer is not caused by our genes. In other words, most cancers are not inherited
from our parents. A recent medical study of 44,000 twins re-affirmed that most cancers are
caused by exposure to environmental factors. This is good news, because it means that most
cancers can be prevented, by preventing exposure to cancer-causing agents.
This cancer prevention philosophy is new. The U.S. has spent billions of dollars trying
to find a cure for cancer, but very little trying to prevent it it. Now cancer prevention is
beginning to be taken seriously, and a leader in cancer prevention has focused its work
on the Great Lakes. I’m talking about a small government agency called the International
Joint Commission, or IJC, which focuses on water quality in the Great Lakes. For the past
decade, the IJC has been preaching the virtues of keeping cancer-causing chemicals out of the
Lakes. In fact, the IJC is now recommending that we keep all persistent toxic chemicals out of
the Lakes. The IJC says we must eliminate persistent toxic chemicals because once we create them,
there’s no safe way to manage them — they get loose and come back to bite us, or give us cancer.
In 1992 the IJC said we must “recognize that all persistent toxic substances are dangerous
to the environment, deleterious to the human condition, and can no longer be tolerated in the
ecosystem….”
In other words, instead of trying to decide how much pollution is safe to allow in our
water or on our cornflakes, the IJC says we should take a preventive approach — we should
eliminate toxic substances.
And you know what? Preventing pollution can pay off in more ways than one: as we prevent
cancer, there will be a lot of new jobs created as people develop non-toxic products to replace
all the toxic chemicals we now use. No doubt about it, cancer prevention is a good policy —
good for public health and good for the economy.
HOST TAG: Peter Montague is the editor of Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly, which is
available free on-line at www.rachel.org