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# Cadmium boosts breast cancer risk, antioxidant vitamins reduce its toxicity
- URL: https://www.foodconsumer.org/cadmium_breast_cancer_vitamin_c_1213131239/
- Published: 2013-12-13T01:37:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-22T16:21:27.000Z
- Description: A case-control study of 405 Japanese breast cancer patients and as many controls found women with the highest dietary cadmium were 23% more likely to have breast cancer, and 94% more likely to have ER-positive tumors after menopause.
- Author: Food Consumer
- Tags: Vitamins, Nutrition, #vivvo-import

Friday Dec 13, 2013 (foodconsumer.org) -- Taking vitamin C supplements may reduce the toxicity induced by toxic metal cadmium which at high doses induce breast cancer, studies suggest.

A new case-control study in the Jan 2014 issue of International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health shows that Japanese women who wee exposed to high levels of toxic metal cadmium were 23% more likely than those with a low exposure to the toxin to develop breast cancer.

H. Itoh from Juntendo University Faculty of Medicine, 2-1-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8421, Japan and colleagues conducted the study and found women in the tertile of highest ingestion of cadmium were 23% more likely to develop breast cancer compared with those in the lowest tertile.

The researchers explain in their study report that cadmium, an environmental pollutant, may act like an estrogen and promote estrogen dependent breast cancer.

For the study, 405 cases of breast cancer and the same number of controls were compared for their cadmium intake. Statistical analysis revealed that exposure to cadmium was positively associated with 23% increased risk of whole breast cancer. The association was not affected by menopausal status, smoking status, and status of diabetes mellitus.

Also high ingestion of cadmium was associated with 94% increased risk for ER+ breast cancer in postmenopausal Japanese women.

Another study in Human and Experimental Toxicology suggests that eating bee honey, taking vitamin C supplements and complex b vitamins may help reduce the breast cancer promoting activity of cadmium.

For the study, I. Abdelaziz from Biology Department, The Islamic University of Gaza in Palestine and colleagues injected subcutaneously 3 mg cadmium chloride /kg of body weight or placebo in rabbits.

Cadmium exposure led to an increase in serum glucose, triglycerides, cholesterol, albumin, total protein, globulin, urea and creatine. cadmium also increased uric acid, aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, bilirubin and alkaline phosphatase.

The toxicity of cadmium was be relieved by vitamin C, and B complex and bee honey with bee honey most effective in restoring the altered blood indices.

Breast cancer risk can be affected by many risk factors. Therefore, there are many things a food consumer can do to prevent the disease.

Breast cancer is expected to be diagnosed in 230,000 women each year in the United States and the disease and its complications kill about 37,000 annually in the country. (David Liu, PHD)