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Marines are talking about it. Maybe other men will too. That's breast cancer, mistakenly considered by some people to be an illness confined to women. It's not.

That should be made clear this month, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, even as pink ribbons reign as icons for the disease that strikes 200,000 women annually.

Now a 41-year-old man raised at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina has told lawmakers that he blames contaminated water at the training base for his breast cancer, discovered two years ago.

At least 40 former Marines or sons of Marines who lived at Lejeune have been diagnosed with the cancer that strikes fewer than 2,000 men a year, CNN reports.

Legislation is being pushed to force the Department of Veterans Affairs to cover the medical costs of Marines and their families who were exposed to the contaminated water. This unusual cluster of illness is just that, unusual, as is breast cancer among the general populace of men. But it does develop in some men, most commonly between ages 60 and 70.

This year, about 440 men will die from breast cancer in the United States. It's not a terribly astonishing statistic -- unless you happen to be among the 440.

Sun Chronicle reader J. Richard Lebel of South Attleboro pointed this out in a letter to this newspaper, asking that "blue" be included in the "pink hue drenching this country."

"Of course, a much smaller number of men suffer from breast cancer in comparison to women," wrote Lebel, a long-retired radiologic technologist. "But the tragedy is that more men, percentage-wise, die from the disease. Why is this so? Because of the lack of education and publicity, and because we are, well, men, and often in denial about our health. One of my patients was a man with a breast tumor. It was too late for him because he had no idea of the seriousness of his condition. Not surprising."

Risk factors for male breast cancer include - but are not confined to - exposure to radiation, family history and having high estrogen levels, which can occur with diseases such as cirrhosis or Klinefelter's syndrome, a sex chromosome condition.

Breast cancer risk rises if blood members of the family have had breast cancer. About one in five men with breast cancer have close male or female relatives with the disease.

Symptoms of male breast cancer include lumps, changes to the nipple or breast skin, or discharge. Treatment is usually a mastectomy, the surgical removal of the breast, radiation, chemotherapy and/or hormone therapy.

It's easier to detect breast cancer in men, if they or their doctors are checking, simply because there's ordinarily less breast tissue. But for the same reason, cancers do not need to grow very far to reach the nipple, the skin or the muscles underneath.

So even though breast cancers in men tend to be slightly smaller than in women when they are found, reports the American Cancer Society, they have more often spread beyond the breast. The extent of spread is an important factor in the outlook for the patient.

This should prompt men who may be embarrassed about finding a breast lump and worry that someone might question their masculinity, to get to a doctor right away. It's a man's disease too. If you're one of those who have put off getting that lump checked, do it this week. Former Cleveland Browns fullback Ernest "Ernie" Green was treated for breast cancer. So was Shaft's star actor, Richard Roundtree, country singer Paul Ott Carruth and Edward Brooke, the former Massachusetts U.S. senator. Some former Marines have joined the club.

Sun Chronicle reader J. Richard Lebel is right on the mark in saying that October could use a shot of blue along with the flood of pink as a reminder to men to take care of themselves.

BETSY SHEA-TAYLOR, a former editor and writer for The Sun Chronicle, is a freelance writer. She can be reached at prosewing@aol.com.