“The true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated.” President’s Cancer Panel 2008-2009
Earth Day is painfully personal for me and my family. As an advocate to cleanup one of America’s worst nuclear meltdown sites, the Santa Susana Field Lab, I know the impact environmental health has on human health.
My daughter is one of 50 kids in our community to have cancer, so I know that keeping our environment free of radioactive waste and carcinogenic chemicals is so important to keep kids safe and healthy. And pediatric cancer rates have risen over 35% since the 1970s! That’s outrageous!
Pediatric cancers were once thought to be caused primarily by random mistakes in cell division. Research is now focusing on the relationship between pediatric cancers and the environment. Less than 10% of kids with cancer have a family history of the same type of cancer. Children don’t get cancer from decades of smoking, drinking, or sunbathing. It’s not just a fluke causing more kids to get cancer every year and it's not their lifestyle choices.
I strongly believe kid's cancers are either caused directly by the environment or there is a genetic predisposition with a environmental trigger. In my research I’ve found dozens of studies that directly link pediatric cancer to contaminated environments. But for some reason these facts aren’t news headlines- they should be!
If you’d like to help the earth today, on Earth Day, then please donate to a pediatric cancer-environmental study. If we can get solid science that links pediatric cancer to environmental contamination then the government will take serious action! We’ll protect kids from cancer AND clean the earth! It’s a win-win!
Warmly,
Melissa Bumstead
Founder, Parents Against the Santa Susana Field Lab
Environmental Protection Agency, 2017: Protecting Children's Health Where They Live, Learn, and Play: “This [rise in pediatric cancer incidence rates] may be a result of increasing exposures to environmental toxicants.”
National Institute of Health, 2020: Birth Characteristics and Risk of Pediatric Thyroid Cancer: A Population-Based Record-Linkage Study in California: “Incidence rates of thyroid cancer in children and young adults (age 0-19 years) have nearly doubled over a recent 15-year period in the United States. High-dose exposure to ionizing radiation is the only known non-genetic risk factor...”
UC Berkeley, 2016: With rise of leukemia in children, $6 million grant funds search for causes: “The rise in leukemia cases over a relatively short time frame points to a role for environmental triggers.”
National Institute for Health, 2016: An overview of disparities in childhood cancer: Report on the Inaugural Symposium on Childhood Cancer Health Disparities: “While the mortality due to childhood cancer has been decreasing since the 1970s, overall incidence has increased over the same period.”
The Journal of Pediatric Hematology & Oncology, 2015: Children’s Cancer and Environmental Exposures: Professional Attitudes and Practices: “Exposure to ionizing radiation from nuclear accidents… is associated with an increased risk of childhood leukemia and solid tumors.”
The President’s Cancer Report, 2009: Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk, What We Can Do Now: “Opportunities for eliminating or minimizing cancer-causing and cancer-promoting environmental exposures must be acted upon to protect all Americans, but especially children… are at special risk due to their smaller body mass and rapid physical development, both of which magnify their vulnerability to known or suspected carcinogens, including radiation.”
World Health Organization, 2009: Children's Health and the Environment WHO Training Package for the Health Sector: “Carcinogenesis occurs in three main stages: Initiation of the cancer occurs when an environmental agent such as a chemical, an infection or radiation successfully damages DNA and this damage fails to be repaired.”
National Institute for Health, 2001: Environmental contaminants and children’s health: Cause for concern, time for action: “By default we are conducting a massive toxicological experiment, and our children are the ‘experimental animals.”