American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access originally published online on December 13, 2006
American Journal of Epidemiology 2007 165(6):643-651; doi:10.1093/aje/kwk046
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ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS |
Reported Residential Pesticide Use and Breast Cancer Risk on Long Island, New York
1 Department of Community Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY
2 Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
3 Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY
4 Department of Medicine, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY
5 Department of Biostatistics, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY
Correspondence to Dr. Susan L. Teitelbaum, Department of Community Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, One Gustave Levy Place, Box 1043, New York, NY 10029 (e-mail: susan.teitelbaum{at}mssm.edu).
Received for publication February 2, 2006. Accepted for publication July 28, 2006.
Pesticides, common environmental exposures, have been examined in relation to breast cancer primarily in occupational studies or exposure biomarker studies. No known studies have focused on self-reported residential pesticide use. The authors investigated the association between reported lifetime residential pesticide use and breast cancer risk among women living on Long Island, New York. They conducted a population-based case-control study of 1,508 women newly diagnosed with breast cancer between August 1996 and July 1997 and 1,556 randomly selected, age-frequency-matched controls. Comprehensive residential pesticide use and other risk factors were assessed by using an in-person, interviewer-administered questionnaire. Unconditional logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Breast cancer risk was associated with ever lifetime residential pesticide use (odds ratio = 1.39, 95% confidence interval: 1.15, 1.68). However, there was no evidence of increasing risk with increasing lifetime applications. Lawn and garden pesticide use was associated with breast cancer risk, but there was no dose response. Little or no association was found for nuisance-pest pesticides, insect repellants, or products to control lice or fleas and ticks on pets. This study is the first known to suggest that self-reported use of residential pesticides may increase breast cancer risk. Further investigation in other populations is necessary to confirm these findings.
breast neoplasms; case-control studies; environmental exposure; gardening; housing; pesticides
Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; LIBCSP, Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project; OR, odds ratio