Pesticides and Breast Cancer: Fact or Fad?

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Abstract
Breast cancer incidence has risen steadily over most of the last 50 years. Multiple explanations have been invoked for this rise and include increased mammographic screening, an aging population, and changes in the prevalence of accepted risk factors associated with prolonged exposure to unopposed estrogen (e.g., delayed childbearing and earlier menarche). However, no explanation is more contentious than the putative role of weakly estrogenic environmental contaminants such as the pesticide DDT and the industrial products polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Although widespread use of both types of compounds effectively ceased in the United States during the 1970s, their ability to accumulate and to persist in adipose tissues has raised fears about their contribution to breast cancer development in recent years.