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Food & Drug Administration (FDA) admits medical radiation risks, ignores mammography dangers.

The Cancer Prevention Coalition notes with approval that on February 9, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would take stringent action to regulate "the most potent forms of medical radiation," particularly those from increasingly popular CT scans.

Cancer Prevention Coalition Chairman Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. commends the FDA for warning that such radiation is unsafe and equivalent to that of about 400 chest X-rays, 0.4 rads (radiation absorbed dose), and "can increase a person's lifetime cancer risk."

However, says Dr. Epstein, "the FDA remains strangely unaware that radiation from routine premenopausal mammography poses significant and cumulative risks of breast cancer."

This warning is contrary to conventional assurances that radiation exposure from mammography is trivial, about 1/1,000 of a rad, and similar to just that from a chest X-ray. However, Dr. Epstein explains, the routine practice of taking two films of each breast results in exposure of about 0.4 rads, focused on the breast rather than on the entire chest.

This alarming information is not new, explains Dr. Epstein. In 1972, the prestigious National Academy of Sciences warned that the overall risks of breast cancer increase by 1% for every single rad exposure. This totals a 10% risk from 10 years annual premenopausal mammography.

A 1993 Swedish study involving 42,000 women showed that those under the age of 55 who received regular premenopausal mammography experienced a 29 percent greater risk of dying from breast cancer.

The International Journal of Health Services article further stressed that cancer risks from mammography are up to fourfold higher for the 2 percent of women who are silent carriers of a gene known as the A-T (ataxia-telangiectasia), and highly sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation. This accounts for up to about 20 percent of all breast cancers diagnosed annually.

Five radiologists have served as presidents of the American Cancer Society, Dr. Epstein notes, warning, "In its every move, the ACS promotes the interests of the major manufacturers of mammography machines, particularly the latest digital machines. These are four times more expensive, but no more effective than the film machines."

Dr. Epstein observes that the mammography industry conducts "research" for the ACS and its grantees, serves on its advisory boards, and donates considerable funds. "In virtually all its actions, the ACS has been and remains strongly linked with the industry."

Dr. Epstein quotes an ACS communications director who said in a 1999 article published by the Massachusetts Women's Community's journal Cancer, " mammography today is a lucrative highly competitive business."

Source: FDA

Discuss more about Mammography in the Mammography user group.