Maps reflecting women's concerns about breast cancer and the environment are today (12 March 2003) being posted onto the Women's Environmental Network (WEN) website View here.

The virtual exhibition has been created to mark International Women's Week and the first anniversary of WEN's health project, Women Taking Action for a Healthier Planet, which was launched on 8 March 2002.

Women throughout the UK drew the maps to express concerns and highlight the perceived links between their experience of breast cancer and the environment, during an earlier project, Putting Breast Cancer on the Map. While the maps are not geographically accurate, they illustrate, in a variety of styles, the journeys some women made through their lives and potential sources of environmental pollution they were exposed to.

The maps are a small representation of over 300 that were received and are the result of a ground-breaking project¹ to raise awareness about breast cancer and the urgent need for prevention.

Helen Lynn, WEN's Health Project Co-ordinator says the mapping project "identified a need in women to take part in positive action to bring about change in the minds of the government and medical establishment, as well as society at large, about the way in which breast cancer is viewed, treated and politicised in the UK. This exhibition is an inspiring record of the valid contribution individuals can make to our understanding of why breast cancer is becoming more common. It shows how mapping can be used as a tool by other groups wanting to raise awareness about an issue and make connections between people's environment and their health."

WEN believes that the rising incidence of breast cancer² reflects the increasingly polluted environment in which we live. Steps to clean up our environment and reduce levels of contaminants linked to breast cancer will have beneficial effects on all environmentally linked illnesses and disease.

ENDS

For more information contact Liz Sutton, Press & Information Co-ordinator
Tel 020 7481 9004 Email info@wen.org.uk

Notes to Editors
1. Putting Breast Cancer on the Map was funded by the National Lottery. Maps were collected between April 1997 and June 1999. The project pioneered the use of mapping as a tool for public participation in environmental justice. Maps were drawn freehand, in workshops around the country, or posted to the project by individuals who had been inspired.

2. Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in the country. An estimated 39,500 cases are diagnosed each year and the chances of a woman in the UK contracting breast cancer during her lifetime rose from 1:12 in 1995 to 1:9 in 2001 (Source: Cancer Research Campaign, Nov 2001). In 1979, there were 21,446 new cases in England and Wales (Source: Office of National Statistics).

3. WEN is a national charity and membership organisation that campaigns on environmental and health issues from a women's perspective. It educates, informs and empowers women and men who care about the environment. Its Women Taking Action for a Healthier Planet project, to empower local groups to take action on links between the environment and health, is supported by the Community Fund.

4. A description of the Putting Breast Cancer on the Map project is contained in a new book, Realizing Rights: Transforming Approaches to Sexual and Reproductive Wellbeing, edited by Andrew Cornwall and Alice Welbourn and published by Zed Books on 7 March 2003. (ISBN 1 85649 968 5 - hardback, £50; 1 85649 969 3 - paperback, £15.95)

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