Touring the breast-cancer industry.

San Francisco 

October was breast-cancer awareness month, and breast-cancer survivor Beverly Lowe celebrated it by going on The Cancer Industry Tour. "People like me and you are not getting cancer because we don't eat enough broccoli or because of who our grandmothers are--that's a lie. It's because of chemicals" Lowe said in front of Chevron's headquarters.

For the past four years, the Toxic Links Coalition has sponsored the Cancer Industry Tour. Judy Brady, a coalition member who was diagnosed with breast cancer nine years ago, says the message women get during Breast Cancer Awareness Month is to exercise more, improve their diets, and go in for regular mammograms. The environmental links to cancer get little attention.

Greenpeace's Bradley Angel calls Breast Cancer Awareness Month "a polluter -- devised event." He points out that the pharmaceutical company Zeneca created Breast Cancer Awareness Month ten years ago. Zeneca makes tamoxifen, the largest-selling breast-cancer drug. In conjunction with Monsanto, Zeneca also produces the pesticide acetychlor.

Brady says scientists have already shown that some cancerous tissues show higher levels of pesticides than do healthy breast tissues. "This is not new. This has been documented," she said. As an example, she holds up a 1993 article by Mary S. Wolff, M.D., published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which showed higher levels of DDE, a metabolized version of DDT, in women with breast cancer.

The tour also stopped at Pacific Gas & Electric, the Bechtel Corporation, and two industry P.R. firms: Porter Novelli and Burson-Marsteller. For more information, contact Greenpeace San Francisco at [phone] and ask for Toxic Links.