In a recent bid to increase breast awareness, retail giant David Jones has introduced mammograms to their stores. The premise being ladies will be more likely to get regular check-ups from a less clinical and convenient setting.
A day of shopping partitioned by a mammogram and manicure breaks in a new concept for providing public healthcare.
But just how safe are mammograms and could a check-up cause cancer?
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered that radiation exposure can alter cells’ microenvironment (the environment surrounding cells). And that greatly raises the odds future cells will become cancerous.
Paul Yaswen, a cell biologist and breast cancer research specialist with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division, released this statement to the press- “Our work shows that radiation can change the microenvironment of breast cells, and this in turn can allow the growth of abnormal cells with a long-lived phenotype that have a much greater potential to be cancerous.”
The researchers pointed out that the levels of radiation used in their experiments were not as much as a woman would be exposed to during a single routine mammogram but were comparable to those a woman could receive during a CT scans or radiotherapy “and could represent sources of concern.”
Although it may now be more convenient to get a check-up, could it also be counterproductive to do so?
For more information:
http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/fac…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…
