In July 2025, she stood up from the benches in the Assemblée Nationale and, her head bare, shouted her anger as lawmakers applauded following the vote on the Duplomb Law, permitting the return of the insecticide acetamiprid. Since then, Fleur Breteau has become the face of the fight against pesticides and has regularly called out politicians about the “cancer epidemic” affecting the country. In Cancer Colère (“Cancer Anger,” 2026, untranslated), the book that bears the name of the collective she founded, she recounts how, between appointments at the cancer research hospital Institut Gustave-Roussy and the mental “fog” of chemotherapy, she tries to understand the links between the disease and the “chemical violence” of pesticides. That’s why she decided to politicize the causes of cancer. The book is a personal account of the deep motivations behind civic engagement and highlights the urgent need to bring public health back to the center of political life.
You have suffered from two different cancers. At what point did you become aware of the links between illness and environmental issues?
When I was diagnosed with my first cancer, in July 2021, I realized how many of us had been affected: friends aged 45 to 50 like me, or even younger, colleagues… I had long known that scientists linked cancers to air pollution and other environmental factors, but I had not thought any further about it. In the hospital, each of us is trapped in the tunnel of our own illness. Environmental issues are simply not discussed.
When I was diagnosed with my second cancer three years later, my first thought was to wonder what I could have done to get it. I thought about the stress from the first one. Patients often feel guilty because no one talks about environmental causes. Then I discovered that scientists consider this disease to be an epidemic in Western countries because it is increasing across all age groups. The incidence, that is, the number of new cases, has doubled since 1990, including among children and people aged 15 to 39.
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