The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, in cooperation with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, will launch a targeted health initiative in January 2010 focused on environmentally-associated cancers.

By the end of this year, the American Cancer Society estimates, 1,479,350 new cases of cancer will be reported in this country. Karmanos Interim President and CEO Ann G. Schwartz, Ph.D., M.P.H., said approximately 70 percent of all cancers are linked to occupational and environmental causes, including tobacco use and diet, based on information from the National Institutes of Health.

“A medical evidence-based approach will be presented to doctors participating in BCBSM’s Physician Group Incentive Program in early December,” Dr. Schwartz said. “The initiative is being designed to detect cancers and other serious illness resulting from exposure to arsenic and asbestos, two of the state’s most frequently encountered carcinogens.”

The director and author of the initiative, Michael Harbut, M.D., M.P.H., F.C.C.P., chief of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, said that by utilizing existing data that has identified workplace and environmental arsenic and asbestos, “we can determine who is at risk, what preventive care may be recommended and more accurately diagnose and treat those at risk because of the water they drink or air they breathe.” 

Dr. Harbut said Karmanos “will offer this program to physicians to accurately identify who is at risk for disease before symptoms become apparent. It is not unusual for people to be unaware that they have even been exposed to these toxins.”

Asbestos and arsenic have been singled out because their impact continues to take a serious health toll on Michigan residents. Michigan has the nation’s largest arsenic-contaminated water table, located primarily in the southeastern part of the state, and an estimated 300,000 homes with asbestos-contaminated attic insulation.

Even low levels of exposure to asbestos can cause asbestosis – a potentially fatal disease of the lungs – as well as lung cancer and mesothelioma, an extremely aggressive cancer of the covering of the lungs and intestines. Smokers are 50 times more likely to develop lung cancer if they also are exposed to asbestos. In addition, colon cancer has been associated with asbestos exposure. There is a latency period from time of first exposure to clinical identification of disease of 15 to 40 years.