New Report Demonstrates the Science and Business Case for Reducing Toxic Chemicals to Eradicate Non-Hereditary Childhood Cancers

NEW YORK, Oct. 2, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- At a recent teleconference, leading experts in the field of childhood cancer, together with Emmy-winning actor, producer and activist Mark Ruffalo, joined speakers from the American Sustainable Business Council, Cancer Free Economy Network, Children's Environmental Health Network, as well as business leaders and environmental justice advisors to lay out three key actions from the "Childhood Cancer: Cross-Sector Strategies for Prevention" report.

i. Shift the current paradigm to address the environmental causes of childhood cancers and the critical scientific, business, public health and policy steps required to protect our children's lives.

ii. Engage the business community on concrete steps to ensure that materials found in the daily lives of our children and expectant mothers are not harmful, while demonstrating the positive economic
opportunity of safer chemical and product choices.

iii. Increase investment in research to further understand the roles of additional environmental exposures in childhood cancers.

The report also calls upon elected officials to take legislative and executive action to fund essential research, regulate toxic chemical pollution and incentivize the production and use of safer chemicals that do not cause cancer.

This cross-sector approach is imperative to reduce the use and emissions of toxic chemicals at a time when rates of new cancers in children are climbing, increasing 34% from 1975, and remains the leading cause of death by disease in children ages 1-19 in the United States.

"We're calling for a nationwide effort to address preventable childhood cancers. We believe that now is the time to act as the number of new cases of childhood cancer continues to rise and cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease for children in the United States. Prevention of the many childhood cancers is possible by reducing and eliminating the production and use of toxic chemicals in products. We're calling on all companies to commit to producing and using safer chemicals and materials in products that don't make children sick or cause cancer," commented David Levine, President, American Sustainable Business Council.

Dr. Phillip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, Director, Program for Global Health and the Common Good at Boston College had this to say, "There's no doubt about the fact that chemicals can cause cancer in children. And yet, we continue to allow children to be exposed to known carcinogens, and we also foolishly, recklessly, allow new chemicals to come onto the market every year, with no testing for safety, no testing for toxicity, no testing for their ability to cause cancer in children. This is madness. There is no excuse scientifically, no excuse morally, no excuse ethically, to allow children to continually be exposed to chemicals that we know cause cancer."

As an environmental activist, actor and producer, Mark Ruffalo has talked to communities across America, "I've been all over the country and in all those communities there are instances of cancer rising, rising rates of cancer in children, phantom cancers, cancer clusters, and a lack of study as to how this is happening. The one thing that I've seen is another kind of cancer, which is the disease of greed. And that disease is keeping us from addressing these issues at their root cause. For money, we have made the tradeoff of our children for this system. This economic system. And it's a perversion of our democracy when our democracy has become in service of capitalism, instead of capitalism becoming in service of democracy."

Margaret Kripke, Professor Emerita, MD Anderson Cancer Center posed the question, "Why isn't environmental carcinogenesis a more prominent issue than cancer research?" She continued, "In our country we use the reactionary approach to regulate chemical safety. And we only regulate chemicals after they are shown to be harmful. So in our country there are very few incentives for developing safe alternatives. If I think what my life was like when I grew up, the differences are extremely striking. We did not use an exterminator; we didn't have herbicides. We had no non-stick pans, no Styrofoam containers, no flame-retardant pajamas, and few household commercial cleaning products. So I couldn't help but wonder: what is the impact of all these chemicals on human health?"

Business leader Joey Bergstein, CEO of Seventh Generation and board member of ASBC remarked at the teleconference, "Conscious capitalism must play a role in creating safe, effective products for people and for preventing the kind of escalation we've seen in childhood and all cancers. What we're facing with childhood cancer is the unintended consequences of just innovating without thinking about what happens at the end of the life of these products, and the bioaccumulation of toxic chemicals inside products that people use every single day. This is a real matter of business imperative."

The Childhood Cancer Prevention Initiative will arm parents with the knowledge they need to make choices to protect their children, but many exposures are beyond an individual's control. Businesses and governments have a responsibility--and opportunity--to accelerate the reduction in the use of toxic chemicals, to give families the best chance at a cancer-free future, sparing their children severe chemotherapy treatments, originally intended for adult use. It's time to take preventative measures to reduce the number of children diagnosed with the disease each year.

Click here to take action! Find our more and download the report at ChildhoodCancerPrevention.org.

# # #

The Childhood Cancer Prevention Initiative is a collaborative effort to improve children's health by widely sharing the evidence base about the impacts of toxic chemicals on children, as well as opportunities for preventing childhood cancer by removing toxic chemicals from products and environments where children live, learn and play. Together, we will engage scientists and health professionals to review and interpret research; help manufacturers and retailers drive a shift in business practices; and encourage elected officials to implement responsible state and federal policies. We will learn from the experiences of parents, workers, businesses and communities, and provide them with information and tools to avoid exposure to potentially dangerous substances and exercise their power to shift the marketplace. For more information about the initiative contact: [email protected]

Email: [email protected]
Website: ChildhoodCancerPrevention.org
Social Media: #PreventChildhoodCancer

@ASBCouncil (Insta, Twitter)
@AmericanSustainableBusinessCouncil (FB)
@CFENetwork (Twitter)
@CancerFreeEconomy (FB, Insta)
@CenterForEnvironmentalHealth (FB)
@CEHN (Twitter)
@CEHNet (FB)
@CleanHealthyNY (Twitter, FB, Insta)
@CleanProAct (Twitter)
@MadeSafeHQ (Twitter, Insta)
@Max_Cure (Twitter)
@MaxCureFoundation (FB, Insta)
@UMLResearch (Twitter, FB)

For More Information Contact:
Name: Giselle Chollett
Cell: +1 (917) 386-7116
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Childhood Cancer Prevention Initiative