By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, Special to The New York Times
In the days since the New York State Health Department released a report suggesting an association between the high rate of breast cancer on Long Island with living near chemical plants, citizen groups that fight breast cancer in the Northeast have been taking another look in their own backyards -- and at Long Island's vocal breast-cancer lobby. From New Jersey to Massachusetts, advocacy groups that normally concentrate on breast cancer or pollution have been examining the study. The findings came after years of intense pressure from breast-cancer support groups on Long Island armed with their own maps showing clusters of breast-cancer cases in certain parts of the Island, and from elected officials like Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato of New York and State Senator Michael J. Tully of Roslyn Heights.
The report, which was released on April 12, was also the first by a public health agency that appeared to lend credence to a growing suspicion among proponents of breast-cancer research that industrial pollution may account for some of the steady rise in the incidence of the disease. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among women ages 35 to 52.
In New Jersey, where parts of the state have breast-cancer rates that dwarf even the 112 per 100,000 of Nassau County -- the national rate was 94.7 in the 1980's -- members of the state's Breast Cancer Coalition said they would probably start to focus more on possible environmental links to breast cancer. They also criticized what they said was a paucity of information and research in their state, whose state cancer registry released figures that are six years old as the most recent available.
Political Action Considered
"We don't have that strong political sense that got Long Island started," said Felice James of the coalition. "But I don't feel our environment is any safer here."
The New York study found that women who lived near chemical plants between 1965 and 1975 had a 60 percent higher chance of developing breast cancer after menopause. It said the risk was about equal to that of having a family history of breast cancer. While the report did not study each woman's exposure to toxic chemicals, it said the risk increased with the number of plants near a woman's home, and decreased with her distance from the plants.
The report did not link higher incidences of cancer to any one factory. Of the 830 chemical plants surveyed, about 220 are still in operation, according to the state's Department of Environmental Conservation. Along with newer plants that opened since the survey, they are subject to pollution controls that did not exist in 1965.
The report, which Health Department officials were quick to say raised as many questions as it answered, led to a record-breaking 600 calls to its toll-free environmental health number -- (800) 458-1158, said Faith Schottenfeld, a public health specialist for the department.
While most of the calls were from women requesting copies of the study, the department also heard from people about to move to Long Island, and some who live here asking if they should move, Ms. Schottenfeld said. She said that earlier studies of environmental factors on Long Island had found no link to breast cancer, and the current study did not establish cause and effect.
"Here's a case where we see an association and that's an important piece of research, but it doesn't translate to any one individual needing to be concerned at this point," she said.
Health officials said they had no reason to believe their findings did not apply to other areas.
Statistically speaking, the Northeast is considered a breast-cancer hot spot, said Dr. G. Iris Obrams, a branch chief at the National Cancer Institute. Following a Congressional order, the institute is financing some half a dozen studies of possible environmental causes of the high breast-cancer rates in the Northeast, from electromagnetic fields to air pollution, murky water and pesticides.
Northeast Studied
"The whole Northeast is an area that's in need of study," said Dr. Obrams, who is overseeing the studies in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maryland, Delaware and Washington. A battery of separate ecological tests will be conducted on Long Island.
On Staten Island, where the breast cancer rate is more than 10 percent above the state average of 95.8 per 100,000, the Long Island findings made Barbara Warren think of the petrochemical plants of New Jersey, whose fumes waft over the methane-emitting landfills of Staten Island.
"New Jersey tends to site all their industry on the east coast, so the air blows on Staten Island, not on their communities," said Ms. Warren, who runs the Staten Island Citizens for Clean Air.
In Connecticut, there is less political activism among breast-cancer patients, whose groups seem largely focused on helping women through the initial ordeal of diagnosis and treatment of their illness. Judy Breekland, founder of the Ridgefield Breast Cancer Support Group, said its patients are trying to cope on a more personal level. "Everybody's always wondering why the rates go up, but at this point they're concerned with what's happening now to them," Ms. Breekland said. "You almost have to get a movement started, do some rabble-rousing."
Lorraine Pace of West Islip, whose group, Breast Cancer HELP (Healthy Environment for a Living Planet), did the initial cluster maps in her basement, said she had had calls from as far away as Poland and Australia. She said on Friday that the Health Department's report did not really offer any answers; she expected the National Cancer Institute studies to provide more clues to the high rate of breast cancer on Long Island. But every look at the Great South Bay strengthened her conviction that ecology played a role.
"You used to be able to go out and fish in the bay; you could walk across the bay from clam boat to clam boat," she said. "You can't do that now. I think that whatever happened to the clams is now happening to us."
