A new study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention has clarified that wearing a bra has nothing to do with the development of postmenopausal breast cancer in women.

A lot of people think that bra wearing can restrict the lymph system and can cause toxins to build up in the breasts that eventually result in cancer. The National Center for Health Research says that these wrong rumors were fueled by a 1995 book by Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer called Dressed To Kill.

In this book, the authors claim that women who wear underwire bras for 12 hours a day have a much higher risk of developing cancer than women who do not wear bras. Many professionals and bodies such as the American Cancer Society have confuted this statement by pointing out that there is no evidence to support the argument presented in the book.

In addition to all this, the new study largely based on evidence shows that bra wearing is not linked to cancer. The study was conducted by Lu Chen, MPH, researcher at the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University Of Washington School Of Public Health, both in Seattle.

For this study, Chen and colleagues conducted in-person interviews with 454 women with invasive ductal carcinoma and 590 women with invasive lobular carcinoma, the two most common types of breast cancer. All these women were aged between 55 and 74. A series of question were asked from these women along with their reproductive history.

On analyzing all the information, the researchers found that no aspect of wearing a bra was linked to an increased risk for breast cancer. The researchers got almost similar results irrespective of the hours per day women wore a bra, bra had underwire or not or the age at which they began wearing a bra.