Can working in a textile factory give you breast cancer?

In 5 seconds An UdeM-led study suggests that being exposed to chemically treated and cotton fibres, especially at a young working age, raises the risk of developing breast cancer after menopause.
The results reveal a possible association between exposure to cotton fibers and an increased risk of postmenopausal breast cancer. Women exposed to these fibers had a 42% increased risk of cancer compared to unexposed women. When exposure occurred before the age of 36 or before the first full-term pregnancy, the risk reached 63%.

Exposure to certain textile fibres in the workplace may increase the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women, according to a new analysis led by researchers at Université de Montréal's School of Public Health.

Working with McGill University epidemiologist Mark Goldberg and supervised by UdeM professors Vikki Ho and France Labrèche, master's student Maymouna Myriam Ka examined data from a case-control study of 1,248 women done between 2008 and 2011.

The team's analysis points to potential links between breast cancer and exposure to cotton fibres and chemically treated fibres. Risks appear notably elevated when exposure occurs before age 36 or before a first pregnancy.

In 2021, Canada’s textile industry employed approximately 37,000 people, 64 per cent of whom were women. As early as 1990, the International Agency for Research on Cancer had flagged work in the industry as a possible cancer risk, citing fibre dust and dyes as suspected carcinogens.

“Our team of epidemiologists is interested in occupational exposures that are understudied in this country,” Ho explained. “We focus on occupational exposure because environmental factors are often present in higher concentrations in the workplace.”

Maymouna Myriam Ka

Building on earlier work

Ka’s research project built on earlier work from the 1990s and 2000s. She examined data on postmenopausal women aged 47 to 75 living on the Island of Montreal, covering 661 breast cancer cases diagnosed in Montreal hospitals offering breast-cancer treatment and 587 control subjects selected at random from Quebec's electoral list.

Individual interviews were conducted to collect each participant’s complete occupational history and lifestyle information. 

To assess exposure to textile fibres, two occupational hygienists reviewed each participant’s occupational history, blind to whether the participant was a case or a control. This expert-led approach, which draws on established databases and professional judgment to determine possible exposure, is considered the gold standard in retrospective studies. 

The substances analyzed included natural fibres (cotton, wool, linen, silk), synthetic fibres (polyester, rayon, nylon, acrylic) and treated textiles—fibres that underwent chemical dyeing or finishing. The experts evaluated each exposure by four criteria: intensity, frequency, duration and confidence that the exposure occurred.

  • Women exposed to cotton fibres had a 42 per cent higher risk of postmenopausal breast cancer than those who were not. The risk rose to 63 per cent when the exposure occurred before the age of 36 or before the first full-term pregnancy.

“This finding is particularly important, since breast tissue is still proliferating during this stage of life,” said Ho. 

  • For treated textile fibres, the increase in risk was 39 per cent when exposure occurred before age 36 or first pregnancy.
  • For polyester fibres, a negative association with breast cancer risk emerged. The research team suspects this may be due to confounding factors that they didn’t control for, rather than any protective effect of polyester.
  • No association was found for the other fibres studied, including wool, silk, linen, nylon, and rayon.

Though methodologically rigorous, the study has limitations. The number of participants exposed to some fibres or diagnosed with certain tumour subtypes was low, limiting the statistical power of the analysis.

In addition, “the wide confidence intervals indicate uncertainty in the risk estimates,” Ho said. 

“The results suggest an association between exposure to some substances and breast cancer in our population, but they must be interpreted with caution. We cannot make precise recommendations yet.”

Vikki Ho, Université de Montréal's School of Public Health professor

A need for increased monitoring

The global textile industry is rapidly evolving, with constantly changing processing and manufacturing methods. Many Canadian manufacturing facilities were offshored in the late 1990s and early 2000s, transforming the profile of occupational exposure.

“A Chinese study has looked at this, but we need more research with more tailored study designs,” said Ho. Specifically, she pointed to the need for cohort studies that follow textile workers over time to better analyze causal relationships.

“Our findings suggest special attention should be paid to occupational exposure to cotton fibres and treated textiles, especially among young female workers,” she  concluded. 

“Fast-changing manufacturing processes warrant closer monitoring and further epidemiological studies that take menopausal status, biomolecular tumour types and exposure timeframes into account.”

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