It’s been just over a month since I returned from the NBCCF Advocacy Conference and my mind is still spinning from everything I learned during those three days. While I returned exhausted from the brain-expanding plenary sessions and workshops, I felt energized to take this new knowledge and incorporate it into nursing practice at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess BreastCare Center. To no surprise this year’s conference offered an opportunity to hear thought provoking perspectives on topics that I know would never be touched upon at other nursing and medical conferences. I continue to be amazed by NBCCF’s ability to inspire, empower and teach at the same time as they challenge the status quo!

Judi Hirshfield-Bartek RN MS OCN
Clinical Nurse Specialist
Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
NBCCF Board Member
Dr Susan Love Research Foundation

The issue of the safety of bisphenol A (BPAs), an environmental chemical that seems to act like hormones, has been in the news a lot lately, and in fact was discussed at NBCCF’s recent Advocacy Training Conference. NBCCF is closely following the ongoing story. BPAs get into food and beverages stored in plastic containers made of polycarbonate, including many baby bottles and some water bottles (labeled with the recycling symbol #7), as well as from cans lined with a polycarbonate resin.

Recently, the U.S. National Toxicology Program, a government organization, issued a draft report on the safety of BPA. The report said that this chemical has been found in the urine of 93% of people aged 6 and older. It didn’t identify any studies of health effects in humans, but there are some laboratory studies in rodents that showed reproductive effects and precancerous breast lesions as a result of exposure to BPA, at low levels of the chemical similar to what humans are exposed to. The report expressed concern that bisphenol A could “possibly” affect human development or reproduction. A review from 2005 analyzed many other studies in laboratory animals, wildlife, and cells have demonstrated that BPA is associated with a variety of hormone-like behaviors and health outcomes in animals, possibly at very low levels of exposure. On May 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that, although their review of the chemical continues, “there is a large body of evidence that indicates that FDA-regulated products containing BPA currently on the market are safe and that exposure levels to BPA from food contact materials, including for infants and children, are below those that may cause health effects.”

NBCCF does not believe that FDA’s confidence in BPA’s safety is justified by the growing body of evidence in animals that BPA is an endocrine disruptor; furthermore, safety has not been demonstrated in human studies.  We would like to see more research to understand BPA’s effects at low exposure levels, and also to see more human studies done of the health effects of this common chemical. The National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences are funding a multi-center study (with investigators in New York City, Cincinnati, and Northern California) to measure BPA and other known and suspected endocrine-disrupting chemicals in 1200 9-year-old girls, and following them forward in time, to see whether exposure to the chemicals is associated with changes in pubertal development, particularly aspects of development that are relevant to breast cancer.

Other plastics used for food packaging may also be of health concern. These are numbered according to the recycling number typically found on the bottom: #3 (polyvinyl chloride, a probable human carcinogen), #6 (polystyrene, a possible human carcinogen); more information can be found at the National Geographic’s Green Guide website. Better choices, according to the Green Guide, are #1 (PET), #2 (high density polyethylene), #4 (low density polyethylene), and #5 (polypropylene). Glass and metal bottles are options as well.

As NBCC advocates know, breast cancer is a political issue. Monday morning at the conference was all about policy and politics. Following the unveiling of NBCC’s new Framework for a Health Care System Guaranteeing Access to Quality Health Care for All and a discussion about the health care plans of the presidential candidates, we were ready for lunch and a talk from Eleanor Clift, a Newsweek reporter and a regular guest on The McLaughlin Group.

If you’re not a regular viewer of The McLaughlin Group, you need to know that it is a weekly TV political discussion show. Nobody can get more than six words out before getting interrupted. Eleanor is usually the only woman on the show, and she told the audience that when she began appearing on the program twenty years ago, the “boys” did not know how to handle her and first acted – shock, shock – polite! Eleanor said she knew she had arrived when Robert Novak, also known as the “Prince of Darkness,” tossed a put-down her way.

Eleanor likened her difficulties breaking the glass ceiling of The McLaughlin Group to those of women members of Congress and of women everywhere. She talked about the challenges women candidates faced getting elected – and then, once arriving in Congress, becoming effective. This year’s presidential campaign, with a woman as a serious candidate, is also history in the making, and the rules on how a woman candidate should act and be covered are being rewritten every day.

In addition to being a journalist, Eleanor is the author of several books, the most recent an account of sharing the final two weeks of her husband’s life as he lay dying at home (under hospice care) of metastatic kidney cancer. She said that the experience has given her a new perspective on what needs to be fixed in the health care system. She applauded NBCC advocates for their efforts and told them to go to Capitol Hill tomorrow and be fearless.