Night work raises breast cancer risk

Night work may increase a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer by 30% — a slightly elevated but “statistically significant” risk, researchers have said.

This places night work in the same order of risk as factors like genetic mutation, a late first pregnancy, or hormonal treatment, Pascal Guenel, director of French health research body Inserm, said.

Put into context, a smoker was eight times as likely to contract lung cancer as a woman working night shifts was to get breast cancer, he explained.