Toxic chemicals in the air, water and even in our food are exposing Americans to “grievous harm,” the a presidential cancer advisory panel said Thursday. The group said in a report released Thursday that the problem is underestimated and the government isn’t doing enough to address it.

The advisory group noted in its report that although overall cancer cases and deaths have declined, cancer remains a major health problem. In 2009, the report says, approximately 1.5 million American men, women, and children were diagnosed with cancer, and 562,000 died from the disease.

The report says we need to pay more attention to the environmental factors that contribute to the disease.

“With the growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer, the public is becoming increasingly aware of the unacceptable burden of cancer resulting from environmental and occupational exposures that could have been prevented through appropriate national action,” the panel says in a letter to President Obama included in the report.

The group notes called Congress’s Toxic Substances Control Act “praiseworthy.” But it said, “Our Nation still has much work ahead to identify the many existing but unrecognized environmental carcinogens and eliminate those that are known from our workplaces, schools, and homes.”

LINKS

Download a copy of the 2008-9 Annual report of the President’s Cancer Panel (PDF), CLICK HERE>

May 6, 2010, USAToday.com, “Toxins causing ‘grievous harm,’ cancer panel says”

May 6, 2010, WashingtonPost.com, “Cancer panel: ‘Grievous harm’ posed by unchecked chemicals in U.S.”

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