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September 30, 2004

Environmental Cancer Center to Open

According to the National Cancer Institute, an estimated two-thirds of all cancer cases are linked to environmental causes, many of these to lifestyle factors that can be modified.

To help address prevention of these types of cancer cases, the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) has opened the Center for Environmental Oncology, one of the country’s first such centers.

The mission of the new center, based on an approach that is prevention-focused and multidisciplinary, is to reduce the risk of cancer by applying the latest scientific findings on the avoidable causes of cancer to protect individuals and the community at large.

Devra Davis, award-winning author of the best-seller, “When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution,” has been recruited by UPCI to direct for environmental oncology.

“Dr. Davis is a national leader in the field of epidemiology. We anticipate that she will have a major impact in synthesizing the vast amount of scientific data that is available on the causes of cancer and converting this information into effective public policy and education programs,” said Bernard Goldstein, dean of Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), where Davis has been appointed professor of epidemiology.

As director, Davis will work to create a center for excellence in research, education and public policy that seeks to identify novel causes of cancer; to develop and evaluate instruments for assessment and control of environmental risk factors for cancer and strategies to protect people from environmental cancer risks, and to create public and professional programs that inform, educate and change individual and institutional behaviors.

“Aside from smoking, drinking, other bad habits and some workplace exposures, most cases of cancer occur in people who have led otherwise healthy lives,” Davis said. “Patterns of the disease remain largely unexplained. With this new center, we aim to more fully understand our risks for developing cancer by identifying controllable conditions and urging prudent ways to lower the risk of the disease.

According to Davis, research at the center seeks to address a key question: What causes the majority of people who are born with a healthy array of genes – some 95 percent of women with breast cancer, for example – to develop defects during their lifetime that lead to cancer? “While we know that there are more cases of cancer today because the population is older, and the technology for identifying disease has advanced, we cannot explain most cases of this disease,” said Davis.

A few of the environmental risk factors that will be examined at the center include personal habits, both good and bad, such as nutrition, exercise, alcohol drinking and smoking, as well as factors in the physical and chemical environment that have been linked to cancer such as toxic chemicals, indoor and outdoor air pollutants, chlorination by-products in domestic water, ingredients in personal care products, and organochlorine residues in animal and fish fat.

In addition to professor of epidemiology at GSPH, Davis is visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School, honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and expert adviser to the World Health Organization.

As the former senior adviser to the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, Davis has counseled leading officials in the United States, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and The World Bank on environmental dangers.

In 1994, President Clinton appointed Davis to the newly established Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, an independent executive branch agency that investigates, prevents and mitigates chemical accidents. She also was a distinguished visiting professor at Yeshiva University and Stern College and scholar-in-residence and executive director of the board on environmental studies and toxicology at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

Davis was designated a National Book Award finalist for “When Smoke Ran Like Water” – a book centered on her hometown of Donora, Pa., in which more than 20 residents died from inhaling toxic fumes over the course of four days in October 1948.

Filed under: Feature,Volume 37 Issue 3

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