Breast cancer rates are rising. Meanwhile, there are more than 85,000 synthetic chemicals on the market today, fewer than 10 percent of which have been tested for their effects on our health.

Between these two facts, there’s a huge chasm of information that science may never be able to fill. But we can act now to protect our health: we shouldn’t have to wait for science to catch up with overwhelming commonsense evidence that something is wrong.

Anti-tobacco activists undertook the cause long before we had proof of the biochemical process by which tobacco smoke leads to lung cancer. The same precaution needs to be taken in every area of public health, because waiting for absolute scientific proof is killing us. There is no question that environmental factors are increasingly important contributors to human disease, and precaution should become a guiding principle in public health policy.

Where there is plausible scientific evidence of harm from particular chemicals, action should be taken to reduce or eliminate that harm, despite scientific uncertainty about a cause-and-effect relationship.

That is why Breast Cancer Action is urging corporations—particularly those claiming to support the fight against breast cancer—to explore alternatives to chemicals in their products that appear to be linked to the disease.