Families Against Cancer & Toxics

Tests find 45 of 57 carcinogens in Canadian reporter's blood

Chris Cobb CanWest News Service


OTTAWA -- Wendy Mesley had a rough idea what the results would be when her blood was tested for cancer-causing toxins, but that didn't lessen her dismay when she read the list.

She was tested for 57 carcinogens, 45 were found. But this, she says, is the point: The cocktail of cancer-causing poisons in her body is about the North American average. "Cancer is multiple exposures to multiple risk factors over a period of time," says Mesley. "I'm contaminated and I'm sure everyone else who grew up in North America is, too. I was probably born with a fairly clean slate in the late 1950s, but our own kids are starting out contaminated. That's the really depressing thing."

Mesley had the blood test as part of Chasing the Cancer Answer, her 30-minute documentary that broadcasts this Sunday evening on the CBC-TV consumer series Marketplace. She reads the blood results for the first time on camera.

There is no shortage of shocking detail in Chasing the Cancer Answer, but essentially Mesley's message is this: Through a combination of ignorance, benign neglect, misplaced trust and corporate cynicism, we are allowing ourselves to be poisoned into cancer by commonly used, legal carcinogens and, worse, condemning an alarming number of children and young adults to the same fate.

Doctors diagnosed Mesley with breast cancer in 2004. She had two growths removed and underwent chemotherapy and radiation. Her outlook is now good, but she is in the throes of a year-long treatment with the new drug Herceptin.

"Every three weeks, I go and sit in the chemo ward," she says. "Last time I was there, there was a young woman with a one-month-old baby on her lap. The woman was about 21 years old and starting chemo. The chemo wards are full of young people."

The greatest cause of rising cancer rates is not genetic but environmental, says Mae Burrows, a Canadian environmentalist pushing for legislation that will force companies to declare all carcinogens on consumer product labels.

"There is lots of stuff we should be avoiding," she says during an interview on the show. "But there is absolutely no requirement to label a product if it has a carcinogenic in it. I'd like to see laundry detergents labelled, I'd like to see pet supplies labelled and I'd like to see personal care products labelled. What we're saying to industry is that we know you can reformulate these products without carcinogens. Do it. Make changes and you can still make a buck."

Mesley says it's almost impossible for most consumers to decode or investigate chemicals listed on products. "I've had cancer and I've spent the last year thinking about this story," she says, "and I haven't memorized all the chemicals I have to look for.

"People are busy with jobs and families and they assume the Canadian Cancer Society and Health Canada are looking after them -- if there is something on the shelves that is harming them, it will be taken care of. But it's not that simple. We've got to start looking after ourselves and getting people in positions of responsibility to get this stuff off the shelves. Don't assume that anyone is looking after you."

The documentary features an interview with Dr. Sam Epstein, a cancer expert at the University of Chicago. Epstein says Canada is in a cancer epidemic and the real reasons are being trivialized or ignored by governments and such groups as the Canadian Cancer Society.

"They have told people that if you get cancer, it's your own fault -- it's the lack of a healthy lifestyle," he says. "But there has been almost no movement in prevention. We're spending the money on screening and diagnosis -- damage control. Wait for people to get cancer and then try and treat it. And the more drugs being bought, the greater the profit."

Mesley, mother of a seven-year-old daughter, has been exploring the world of environmental toxins since her own doctors told her about the dramatic rise in cancer -- from roughly one in five Canadians during their lifetime in the 1970s to almost one in two today.

"As a journalist," she says, "it completely blew me away that there is all of this reputable scientific literature available from the most conservative of organizations and we're not told about it. The case against environmental toxins as a leading cause of the increase in cancers is overwhelming. It's not good enough just to tell us to stop smoking or keep out of the sun. We are passing this on to our children."

She was shocked to find that research linking environmental toxins to cancer isn't all new.

"I found this quote from a senior scientist at the National Cancer Institute in the United States," she says. "In 1964, he warned that cancer was an epidemic in slow motion and we are surrounded by carcinogens and other chemicals in what we eat, breathe and touch and if we don't take some action we are going to contaminate ourselves. What are we waiting for? For 100 per cent of people to get cancer?"

© The Edmonton Journal 2006


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