The International Agency for Research on Cancer flagged textile work as a possible cancer risk as far back as 1990, citing fibre dust and dyes, yet the evidence has remained patchy. A new analysis led by master's student Maymouna Myriam Ka, supervised by Vikki Ho and France Labrèche of Université de Montréal's School of Public Health with McGill epidemiologist Mark Goldberg, brings unusual rigour to the question using data from a Montreal case-control study.
The dataset covered 1,248 postmenopausal women aged 47 to 75 on the Island of Montreal: 661 breast cancer cases and 587 randomly selected controls, interviewed between 2008 and 2011 about their full occupational histories. Two occupational hygienists, blinded to who was a case, rated each woman's exposure to natural fibres, synthetics and chemically treated textiles by intensity, frequency, duration and confidence, an expert-review approach considered the gold standard for retrospective studies.
Women exposed to cotton showed a 42 per cent higher risk of postmenopausal breast cancer, rising to 63 per cent when exposure began before age 36 or before a first full-term pregnancy; treated textiles carried a 39 per cent increase for early exposure. No association emerged for wool, silk, linen, nylon or rayon. The authors stress the confidence intervals are wide and call for cohort studies, noting Canada's textile industry employed about 37,000 people in 2021, 64 per cent of them women.