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• Long Island Study Sees No Cancer Tie to Pesticides 

A long-awaited federal study on possible links between pollution and high rates of breast cancer on Long Island has failed to show any connection between the disease and pesticides that were once widely used on the island. It also found only a very slight correlation between cancer rates and exposure to other pollutants, like car exhaust and cigarette smoke.

The findings of the National Cancer Institute study, to be released today, come as a sharp disappointment to local advocates for breast-cancer research and to politicians who pushed Congress to approve the seven-year, $8 million study. . .

The study found no increased rate of breast cancer among women exposed to the pesticides, but found that exposure to chemicals like car exhaust and cigarette smoke appeared to elevate a woman's risk of breast cancer by 50 percent.

Marilie D. Gammon, a University of North Carolina epidemiology professor and the study's lead author, said the 50-percent increase was too modest to declare a clear causal link. Research on cigarette smoking and lung cancer, by comparison, has shown increased cancer rates of between 900 and 1,900 percent.

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