The Environmental Causes of Cancer

This newsletter from the Cancer Support Association of WA makes an interest read.

Some excerpts:

"Environmental carcinogenesis is the newest and one of the most ominous of the end-products of our industrial environment. Though its full scope and extent are still unknown, because it is so new and because the facts are so extremely difficult to obtain, enough is known to make it obvious that extrinsic [outside-the-body] carcinogens present a very immediate and pressing problem in public and individual health."

"Through a continued, unrestrained, needless, avoidable and, in part reckless increasing contamination of the human environment with chemical and physical carcinogens and with chemicals supporting and potentiating their action, the stage is being set indeed for a future occurrence of an acute, catastrophic epidemic, which once present cannot effectively be checked for several decades with the means available nor can its course appreciably be altered once it has been set in motion,"

This is why 50% of all men and 40% of all women in the U.S. will now hear the chilling words, "You've got cancer" at some point in their lives. That's right, 1 out of every 2 men now get cancer in the U.S., and more than 1 out of every 3 women.

Contrary to well-funded rumors, the culprit isn't just tobacco or the hundreds of toxic chemicals intentionally added to tobacco products. Tobacco products remain the single most significant preventable cause of cancer, but they have not been linked to the majority of cancers nor to many of the cancers that have increased most rapidly in recent decades including melanoma, lymphomas, testicular, brain, and bone marrow cancers.[pg. 1]

No, it's more complicated than just tobacco with its toxic additives. Most plastics, detergents, solvents, and pesticides and the toxic-waste by-products of their manufacture came into being after World War II. From the late 1950s to the late 1990s, we disposed of more than 750 million tons of toxic chemical wastes.[pg. 27] Over 40 years, this represents more than two tons of toxic chemical wastes discharged into the environment for each man, woman and child in the U.S. No wonder some of it has come back to bite us.

While all this chemical dumping has been going on, incidence rates for some cancer sites have increased particularly rapidly over the past half century. From 1950-2001, melanoma of the skin increased by 690%, female lung & bronchial cancer increased by 685%, prostate cancer by 286%, myeloma by 273%, thyroid cancer by 258%, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma by 249%, liver and intrahepatic duct cancer by 234%, male lung & bronchial cancer by 204%, kidney and renal pelvis cancers by 182%, testicular cancer by 143%, brain and other nervous system cancers by 136%, bladder cancer by 97%, female breast cancer by 90%, and cancer in all sites by 86%.[pg. 25]

In the most recent 10-year period for which we have data (1992-2001), liver cancer increased by 39%, thyroid cancer increased by 36%, melanoma increased by 26%, soft tissue sarcomas (including heart) by 15%, kidney and renal pelvis cancers by 12%, and testicular cancer increased by 4%.[pg. 25] "

Read more here on why we can't prevent cancer.