ABSTRACT
The well-established risk factors for breast cancer offer few opportunities for intervention and account for less than half of all breast cancer cases.
Most of these factors involve aspects of a woman’s reproductive course that are intimately related to her lifestyle and culture — so are difficult to predict and therefore to change — or are currently immutable (e.g., genotype). While pharmaceutical intervention (e.g., tamoxifen) could be considered as a prophylactic strategy in high risk women,
recommendations for lifestyle changes to reduce the risk of breast cancer remain elusive. If active smoking or environmental tobacco smoke were found to be a cause of breast cancer, they would offer opportunities for lifestyle changes that would
reduce the risk of breast cancer in some women. A history of tobacco smoke exposure would also help to identify women who are at high risk and who may wish to consider prophylactic pharmaceutical intervention.
