REVIEW Molecular Epidemiology: On the Path to Prevention?

Cancer prevention has been the stated goal of molecular cancer epidemiology for the past 17 years. In this review, progress toward that goal is evaluated by using as examples well-studied environmental exposures—i.e., tobacco smoke, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, aflatoxin B1, benzene, and hepatitis B virus—and their roles in lung, breast, and liver cancers and leukemia. The contributions of molecular epidemiology discussed here include providing evidence that environmental agents pose carcinogenic risks, helping estab-lish the causal roles of environmental factors in cancer, iden-tifying environment–susceptibility interactions and popula-tions at greatest risk, and developing new intervention strategies. Molecular epidemiologic and other data indicate that assessment of carcinogenic risks should address both the range of risk across the population and the risk to sub