Environmental noise and breast cancer risk?

Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer among women especially in the Western world where, despite improved survival, it is one of the leading causes of death (1). Furthermore, for several decades there has been an increase in incidence, though recently there seems to be a stabilization in risk or even a small decline in typical high-risk areas such as Europe and the USA but at the same time a steep increase in typical low-risk societies such as Japan (2). Breast cancer is often regarded as a singular disease, but recent discoveries are pointing to a variety of types of potentially different etiology. Thus, the female breast undergoes substantial changes beginning from the time in the fetus and throughout life, especially in response to hormonal ch anges during puberty, pregnancy, lactation and menopause. Consequently, breast tumors are often characterized by at least the status of, for example, menopause and by functional hormonal receptors, such as estrogen receptor positive (ER+) or estrogen receptor negative (ER-) (3). The causes of brea st cancer have been explored during many decades, and especially sex hormones play a pivotal role in the most established risk factors such as early menarche, late menopause, nulliparity, late first pregnancy, oral contraceptives, and hormone replacement therapy. Overall, however, these and other es tablished risk factors for breast cancer explain only a minor fraction of the diseases (4). Non-hormonal avenues of potential risk fac...
Source: Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health - Category: Occupational Health Tags: Editorial Source Type: research