Breast Cancer With Relevance for Heavy Metals, Mycotoxines, and Pesticides

Abstract

Certain environmental contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and mycotoxins are presumed to play a crucial role in the etiology of breast cancer, which is the most common tumor in women worldwide. In fact, the exposure to heavy metals poses risk in causing human cancers. Several investigations indicated strong contribution of heavy metals especially copper, arsenic, zinc, cadmium, lead, and aluminum in breast cancer. Furthermore, it has been reported that the excessive use of pesticides in agriculture in order to improve the productivity contaminates food materials and can be responsible to induce breast cancer in women. It is also noted that some fungi produce several type of mycotoxins such us zearalenone, aflatoxin, and ochratoxin that are dangerous for human health and can especially cause breast cancer. Thus, the objective of this chapter is to discuss the experimental data regarding the involvement of heavy metals, pesticides, and mycotoxins as well as the recent insights on the molecular mechanisms involved in the progress of breast cancer.