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Women who are active on the job or perform housework have a lower risk of breast cancer. The busiest women had a 31 percent less risk than those who were the least active.

Scientists studied 1,233 women with breast cancer and 1,237 women who were healthy and who served as a comparison group. The researchers found the healthy study participants by conducting telephone solicitations.

The researchers asked the women to recall their physical activity over their lifetime. To freshen the subjects' memories, the researchers also asked them to recall events from those times - among them, school experiences and major life events such as weddings.

It was revealed that women who put in more than about 43 hours a week of physical activity throughout their lives had a 31 percent lower risk of breast cancer than did women who put in about 29 hours or less. The study found that women benefitted from housework or office work. The latter was found to carry a slightly greater benefit.

When intensity of the activity was considered separately, women who were moderately active had a 41 percent lower risk of breast cancer. The study defined moderate activity as increase in the heart rate slightly and possibly resulting in some light perspiration.

There was no significant benefit from exercise, but reserachers said there were too few exercisers among the women in her study to ascribe much meaning to that. Women who don't get much activity cleaning house or at work probably would get as much benefit from an equivalent amount of energy-using exercise, according to the researchers.

Exercise may also affect hormones that can raise the risk of breast cancer. Obesity and alcohol use are among modifiable factors. But genetics plays a strong role, and much of the cause of breast cancer simply is not known.

Researchers anlaysed data on breast cancer cases in the province of Alberta from 1995 to 1997. In Canada's health care system, all cancer cases have to be reported to government agencies.

Study results were reported in the September issue of the American College of Sports Medicine journal, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.