If you haven't heard much about DDT, it's because it's already a prohibited pesticide in the United States. However, it's making a comeback based on a new study that suggests it can increase the risk of breast cancer.
A team of researchers from Public Health Institute of Berkeley in California has recently established the link between pre-birth exposure of DDT many years ago and the increased risk of breast cancer among older women today.
For the research, the team relied on the data provided by Health Plan of Kaiser Foundation. Based on the list, there were at least 20,000 pregnancies from the late 1950s toward the late 1960s. Almost half of these pregnancies, meanwhile, resulted to daughters.
To establish the connection of the pesticide and the increased risk of breast cancer, the researcher then looked into the levels of DDT in the blood samples of mothers. These samples were obtained either after the delivery or while the babies were still in the womb.
They also determined that some of these daughters later developed breast cancer by the time they were already in their fifties. To know if it may have something to do with DDT exposure, they then obtained another round of blood samples from mothers with daughters suffering from the cancer. They also compared the levels to those who didn't have the cancer.
The researchers then found out that the risk of breast cancer is higher among women who had been exposed to DDT while still in the womb than those who weren't. Moreover, the risk can go as high as almost 4 times as the level of exposure becomes severe.
Although the researchers want to make it clear that the study doesn't establish the cause and effect, they still want to determine whether the same pattern still holds in succeeding generations.
The research can be read in Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
