Exposure
Environmental Links To Breast Cancer

• A documentary video (53 minutes-colour)
  
  
• With an accompanying Education Resource Action Guide
  
  
• Director: Francine Zuckerman, Producers: Martha Butterfield & Francine Zuckerman
  
  
• Associate Producer, Principle Research Consultant: Dorothy Goldin Rosenberg
  

This video was conceived in response to the growing public debate about the implications of our contaminated world on the health of women. Today one in three people will get cancer. One in four will die from it. In the 1950's, women in industrialised countries were at a one in twenty risk of developing breast cancer over their lifetime. Today that risk has skyrocketed to one in eight. Cancer can have many causes. Seventy to eighty percent of women with breast cancer have none of the "official" risk factors: family history (5-10%), hormonal and reproductive factors and a high fat diet. However, breast cancer rates are increasing all over the world and may be but the tip of the iceberg of other environmentally linked diseases. Timely, responsive and urgently needed, Exposure: Environmental Links To Breast Cancer can play a major role in raising awareness around the little understood, long-term connections between environment, health and disease prevention. It introduces issues, raises questions, awareness and opportunities. It offers strategies for dealing with current unacceptable environmental health conditions and for generating the social and political changes needed for a cleaner, safer world.

Featuring:

• Bella Abzug, Former U.S Congresswoman, President, Women Environment & Development Org., NYC.
  
  
• Sharon Batt, Author, Patient No More: The Politics of Breast Cancer, Chair, Breast Cancer Action, Montreal.
  
  
• Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D, Epidemiologist, President, Int'l Institute of Concern for Public Health, Toronto.
  
  
• Dr. Devra Lee Davis, PhD, M.P.H., World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C.
  
  
• Eva Johnson, Coordinator, Environmental Health Program, Mohawk Nation, Kahnawake, Quebec.
  
  
• Vuyiswa Keyi, Executive Director, Women's Health in Women's Hands, Toronto.
  
  
• Diana Matherly, Artist, Cancer Survivor and Activist, Boston
  .
  
• Matushka, Artist, Cancer Survivor and Activist, Woodstock, New York.
  
  
• Dr. Susan Love, Surgeon, Author, Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book, Los Angeles.
  
  
• Olivia Newton-John, Actor, Singer, Songwriter, Cancer Survivor and Activist.
  
  
• Drs. Ana Soto, Cancer Researcher, Tufts University, Boston.
  

Available from:

The Women's Healthy Environments Network (WHEN)
CCRA Registration N0 11926 2533 RR001
24 Mercer Street, Suite 102,
Toronto, Ontario,
M5V 1H3, Canada.
Tel. (416) 928-0880
www.whenvironments.ca
E-mail: when@web.ca

Praise for
Exposure: Environmental Links to Breast Cancer

Nominated for a 1998 Gemini Award for Best Writing for a Canadian Documentary

Winner of the Best Health Documentary 2001 - New York International Independent Film Festival, September 2001

"With remarkable clarity, the film establishes some of the key findings that link toxins with breast cancer... The printed study guide that accompanies the film raises questions about PVC plastics and other hormone disruptors found in common household detergents and cleaners - and offers wholesome alternatives. EXPOSURE is easy to watch... A series of women - researchers, artists, native activists - combine passion and precision as they spell out the sinister connections."

"...Reflecting and reinforcing the rallying cry of women for aid and attention to an ailing environment, EXPOSURE examines air and water-born contaminants, pesticides, radiation and other man-made agents possibly linked to changes in human genetic coding that seem to lead to the development of breast cancer. And it never preaches, but chooses to probe and provoke."

"In an electronic viewing world consisting increasingly of dumbed-down news reports, hackneyed sound bites, and infomercials, when a documentary packed with challenging and valuable information comes along, it's almost too much to take. Exposure: Environmental Links to Breast Cancer is such a documentary and because of the sheer volume of information it presents, you'll likely have to watch it a few times to digest most of it."

"The film assembles some compelling evidence to support the thesis that the contamination of our environment with pesticides, radiation and a wide range of industrial chemicals is a major contributor to the incidence of breast cancer. The importance of reducing the levels of toxins in the air we breathe and in the food and water we consume is often downplayed in our society. Exposure is a call to action."

"There is now a substantial body of evidence to suggest that toxic substances in our air, food and water are increasing women's chances of getting breast cancer. Given the subject matter, this film should be scarier than it is. But because of an intelligent script and an informed, dedicated cast of speakers - researchers and activists who are multi-aged and multi-racial - it is quick-paced, factual, at times humourous, often using art and music to make a point."