Every woman knows that wearing a bra is an uncomfortable nuisance, but could it be worse? Could it lead to something as nefarious as breast cancer? No, says a study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention: They found no connection between bra-wearing and breast cancer, so feel free to lift and separate to your heart’s desire.

“There have been some concerns that one of the reasons why breast cancer may be more common in developed countries compared with developing countries is differences in bra-wearing patterns,” said Lu Chen, MPH, a researcher in 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. “Given how common bra wearing is, we thought this was an important question to address.”

The study involved over 1,000 women with breast cancer: 454 with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), and 590 with invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC). 469 additional cancer-free women served as control subjects. The participants were asked a variety of exceptionally personal questions, including bra size, lifetime bra-wearing habits, age of first bra, etc. In the end, nothing to do with wearing a bra appeared to have any association with cancer risk.

“There has been some suggestion in the lay media that bra wearing may be a risk factor for breast cancer. Some have hypothesized that drainage of waste products in and around the breast may be hampered by bra wearing. Given very limited biological evidence supporting such a link between bra wearing and breast cancer risk, our results were not surprising,” Chen said.

In other news, water is wet.