They fund research into the environmental causes of breast cancer (a seriously underfunded area), they try to change public policy and attitudes around breast cancer, and they run the "Think Before You Pink" campaign. IMO, they rock.

tomorrow for breast cancer.

Women are not the only victims.

And I am sure they take a cut. Wouldnt it always be more effective to donate to specific organizations than a middleman?

And, yeah, they take a big cut. From what I've been reading over the past few days, a big, fat chunk of the money donated to them goes into overhead. The CEO makes $500 K. All the other top administrators make six figures, as well. I think a good analogy would be the United Way.

I never donate to any charity without checking its Charitywatch grade, which is determined mostly by what percentage of donations actually help the charitable cause. See http://www.charitywatch.org/toprated.html

According to Charitywatch, which is an independent watchdog, 92% of donations to BCRF actually go to program services. This is a much higher percentage than for most charities, hence the A+ grade.

The BCRF page is here: http://www.bcrfcure.org/

Thank you.

www.silentspring.org

Even if you don't donate, they have good information. They do environmental research into breast cancer.

Would you know if they investigate cancer clusters?

I think my neighborhood is a breast cancer cluster.

The woman who previously lived in our house (from 1967 to 1998) died of breast cancer.
The woman in the house on our left died of breast cancer.
The woman in the house behind hers died of breast cancer.
The woman across the street from me has breast cancer.
A woman on the street behind ours has breast cancer. And these five are just the people I know about.

Our development outside Washington DC was built in 1967, and four of the five women I cited above were, with their husbands, original owners. The fifth one has lived here for at least 20 years.

I'd be willing to be that there are a lot of other cases of breast cancer in our community. I wish we knew what was triggering this.

Investigating a cancer cluster is pretty complicated and Silent Spring would be a good place to start. Ask them questions about how to go about this. If they can't help, ask other breast cancer groups.

You may want to build the case for your inquiries. Check with your state and country health departments to see if they keep records of cancer cases by location and type.
Try to pull together an historical profile of the land your development was built on - was it farmland? manufacturing? dumping ground? military facility? etc
Did the houses have regular pesticide applications over the years?
Is there a breast cancer support group in the area that could give you more info about the locations of those affected?
Learn about endocrine disrupting chemicals on the Silent Spring site. Try to figure out if endocrine disrupting chemicals were used there.

Cancer cluster studies are often done by state health dept's and the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry at the request of the CDC. The only problem is, they NEVER find a link between illness clusters and chemicals. Liability concerns are paramount in these situations.

I really hope you can look into this. If it is caused by endocrine disrupting chemicals in your environment - they persist for a very long time. They are also stored in the fat tissue of people exposed to them, where they persist for a long time. They are released into the bloodstream from weight loss, stress etc.

Good luck to you. I hope you find some answers - it will be an education like no other but worth it!

You are really knowledgeable on this subject!

Coincidentally, I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, maybe 10-12 miles from where Rachel Carson lived when she wrote "Silent Spring".

This development was built on farmland, but they may have trucked in fill material from elsewhere in the DC area to grade the lots. I'll have to check with the remaining original owners about that. The fill would be the first thing I'd suspect. We have a lot of existing and former military sites in the area, and I wonder if there was something contaminated that got into the fill.

We also lost a dog several years ago to a horrible quick-spreading cancer cancer in her throat. She used to drink from rain puddles and sometimes from a nearby stream. I will not let our two dogs drink from anyplace except their own bowls. We get our city water from the Potomac River, and it tastes so bad that we use Brita filters and give our pets filtered water.

Also the guy who lives next door (and grew up in that house) found breast lumps last year but luckily they were benign.

These are all typical mid-1960s rambler and split level houses. They originally had Masonite siding, most of which people replaced because it was falling apart. I can't think of anything unique in the building materials that would be different from other houses in the general area.

We're having a meeting of homeowners (there's no homeowner association) in a couple of weeks to see about setting up a volunteer community services exchange, so I'll ask around there. I will also be asking the head of the garden club if she will let me post something on their web site. If it looks like there are a lot of other cancer cases, I'll take this further, following your suggestions. Thanks again.

It does sound like the fill would be a good place to start. If I may offer one more item - if you get to the point of having testing done, please get suggestions from environmental type people. There are many ways to test and some companies are in business to secure the large corporate contracts so their results will please their other clients.

There are many environmental groups in the DC area. One is the Environmental Working Group: www.ewg.org They may be able to reccommend testing companies.

A word of caution - As you gather information, you may run into resistance from people who fear "loss of porperty values." That always happens - just block it out - stopping a fatal cancer is more important!!

Best to you.