Avon's trying

I just read about a grant that Avon awarded last May to researchers at Tufts University in Boston (original news brief here). Drs. Ana Soto and Carlos Sonnenschein received a grant of $450,000 towards their breast cancer research, which focuses on the role of natural hormones and environmental chemicals in the development of the disease.

Here's the twist: Soto and Sonnenschein were the first to shine a spotlight on the estrogen-mimicking compounds in household plastics. Back in the 1980s. Fast forward 30 years, and now the team studies how sex hormones regulate cell proliferations and how environmental contaminants may screw up the process.

So I like that the Avon Foundation is supporting research that may ultimately impact Avon's own product development. The grant was almost a quarter of the nearly $2 million that the foundation awarded to nine Boston-area research organizations following the city's annual Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. That's good. 

What's not so good is that in the THREE DECADES since Soto and Sonnenschein first noticed a link between the chemicals leaching from plastic and cell growth, not a whole lot has changed. Plastics manufacturers have been slow to remove questionable chemicals from the material and consumers have been slower to respond to this blatant complacency.

It took the US less than a decade to plan and execute a successful mission to the moon. But there is no urgency to finding the solutions to preventing environmental cancers. According to the Silent Spring Institute, rates of breast cancer rose 40 percent in the last quarter of the 20th century. When will we, as a nation, put brain power towards halting the incidence of the disease?

-- Jazzy