DDT Linked to Fourfold Increase in Breast Cancer Risk
Nearly everyone in the 1950s and 1960s was exposed to the pesticide, and its use continues in Africa. Three generations of women are involved in the research.
Women exposed in the womb to high levels of the pesticide DDT have a nearly fourfold increased risk of developing breast cancer, according to new results of research conducted on California mothers and daughters for more than half a century.
The legacy of the insecticide, so ubiquitous that most people still carry traces of it in their bodies, continues more than four decades after it was banned in the United States. DDT is still used to fight malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, where people are highly exposed inside their homes.
"If the results of this study are real, it's possible that DDT could be responsible for raising the risk of breast cancer for a whole generation of women," says Shanna Swan,
