Over the past 10 years, rates of colorectal cancer among 25 to 49 year olds have increased in 24 different countries, including the UK, US, France, Australia, Canada, Norway and Argentina.
The investigation’s early findings, presented by an international team at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) congress in Geneva in September 2024, were as eye-catching as they are concerning.
The researchers, from the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) International Agency for Research on Cancer, surveyed data from 50 countries to understand the trend. In 14 of these countries, the rising trend was only seen in younger adults, with older adult rates remaining stable.
Based on epidemiological investigations, it seems that this trend first began in the 1990s. One study found that the global incidence of early-onset cancer had increased by 79% between 1990 and 2019, with the number of cancer-related deaths in younger people rising by 29%. Another report in The Lancet Public Health described how cancer incidence rates in the US have steadily risen between the generations across 17 different cancers, particularly in Generation Xers and Millennials.
Plastic Sugar Teflon Roundup Lead Pesticides Fertilizers
Just a few of the hazardous substances we regularly come into contact with on a semi-daily basis. The cause of the problem is capitalism.
It’s not just capitalism. I’m from east Germany and you wouldn’t believe how much crap was buried, fumed into the air or pumped into the water in the name of peace and socialism.
Don’t forget, Chernobyl happened because of a cost saving measure.
BTW, you forgot alcohol, tobacco, vapes, stress and enforced sedentary lifestyle in your cancer list.
in the name of peace and socialism.
That was the false justification because the actual reason was capitalism.
Don’t forget, Chernobyl happened because of a cost saving measure.
Cutting costs to make a profit is capitalism - especially when the “externality” is a catastrophe for other people.
Younger generations drink less and use less tobacco than basically any other generation, so that’s probably not it.
I don’t know what you mean by “enforced sedentary lifestyle,” but young people tend to do activities that don’t involve exercise in their free time: computer use, phone use, video games, etc.
I think the fact that obesity is up something like 20% since the 90s is probably related. Young people exercise less and eat like shit, which seems pretty related to rectal/colon cancers.
I don’t know what you mean by “enforced sedentary lifestyle,”
Skill issue, I’d argue. May I introduce you to the concept of “working in an office”?
Honestly the working from home with less walking and more sitting seems like the biggest reason for this since there’s some pretty major dietary differences between all these countries, but they probably have a higher rate of WFH compared to other countries.
Read the article. The trend started in 1990, a time where wfh meant assembling ballpoint pens or prostitution.
Lead and Teflon have gone down since the 90s. I’d say it’s mostly plastic. Up and into most all of the 80’s everyone drank tap water and sodas/other drinks were all canned or glass bottles.
Then around 1990 everyone started putting their drink in plastic. Then 15 years later for some dumbass reason, people started to buy and drink all their water out of plastic as well.
Problem with PFAS and many other stuff is that it is accumulating in the biosphere. So while the new emissions go down, you still end up being exposed to more and more of them over time. They still get into the water and then into the plants and animals that you eat later.
The largest contributor to the micro-plastics in your body is tire dust, though, it’s not new. More of it since the 90s, yeah, maybe there’s a threshold?
Old people come into contact with all that stuff too, not just young people.
edit:
Cancer deaths are consistently declining in the US. American Cancer Society’s 2023 report
Despite the pandemic, and in contrast with other leading causes of death, the cancer death rate continued to decline from 2019 to 2020 (by 1.5%), contributing to a 33% overall reduction since 1991 and an estimated 3.8 million deaths averted.
My point is that a lot of these things have flooded the market since the early 80s, which would make the tail end of Generation X the first generation that’s been in constant contact with these things their entire lives.
According to the American Cancer Society’s 2024 stats cancer deaths are declining in some areas (ie: lung cancer) but increasing in many others.
In 2024, 2,001,140 new cancer cases and 611,720 cancer deaths are projected to occur in the United States.
- Cancer mortality continued to decline through 2021, averting over 4 million deaths since 1991 because of reductions in smoking, earlier detection for some cancers, and improved treatment options in both the adjuvant and metastatic settings.
However, these gains are threatened by increasing incidence for 6 of the top 10 cancers.
- Incidence rates increased during 2015–2019 by 0.6%–1% annually for breast, pancreas, and uterine corpus cancers and by 2%–3% annually for prostate, liver (female), kidney, and human papillomavirus-associated oral cancers and for melanoma.
Incidence rates also increased by 1%–2% annually for cervical (ages 30–44 years) and colorectal cancers (ages <55 years) in young adults. Colorectal cancer was the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in both men and women younger than 50 years in the late-1990s but is now first in men and second in women.
- Progress is also hampered by wide persistent cancer disparities; compared to White people, mortality rates are two-fold higher for prostate, stomach and uterine corpus cancers in Black people and for liver, stomach, and kidney cancers in Native American people. Source
you’re conflating mortality metrics with incidence metrics. increasing incidents are very likely biased by improved detection and reporting.
anyway the point is not that cancer is going away or anything, but that you can’t easily say “pollution is giving young people cancer” as the top comment is.
Yes, but capitalism is an economic model that aids and abets greed. Where greed is rewarded almost exclusively.
Which economic model do you prefer?
The distinction between capitalism and socialism isn’t always a bright line.
And communism has yet to succeed.
We’ve poisoned our planet for the last 100+ years and now we are dying off slowly from the fruits of our labor.
The irony.
if that were the case, you’d expect more cancer in older people as well, not just young people.
edit:
Cancer deaths are consistently declining in the US. American Cancer Society’s 2023 report
Despite the pandemic, and in contrast with other leading causes of death, the cancer death rate continued to decline from 2019 to 2020 (by 1.5%), contributing to a 33% overall reduction since 1991 and an estimated 3.8 million deaths averted.
that could also be because less people are being tested as a result of medical burnout, faculty reductions, or other more lethal illnesses taking it’s place.
just because it’s declining generally doesn’t mean it’s actually going away.
more likely the opposite, we see higher “incidents” because of improved detection and reporting. meanwhile deaths decline because of improved treatments and prevention.
Plastics permeate our tissues and people are surprised by this?
Yes, in particular the non-stick forever chemicals known as PFAS (aka Teflon and its precursors). The same chemistry that makes these plastics so non-stick also makes them resilient to being broken down chemically in our bodies. And the more the government tries to regulate them away, the more the industry plays whack-a-mole with modifications to the formula. It’s the designer drug problem writ large!
Wireless communications radiation physically cannot cause increased mutation rates and this is quite well studied. Wireless communication operates on frequencies (for the most part) below 10GHz, which has wavelengths measured in centimeters and meters. The biggest wave that can impact human DNA is UV which has wavelengths measured in nanometers - orders of magnitude of difference. So no, wireless communications are super unlikely to impact cancer rates.
TL;DR, the article says obesity rates and sugar account for a lot but not all of the increase so there is probably something else as well. Some suggestions from the article: artificial light, sleep-patterns, changes in biological clock as a result. Microplastics, especially for colorectal cancer. Ultra processed foods. Increased usage of antibiotics.
Obesity and sugar are presented as known cancer causes while the others are proposed or suggested by experts in the article but nothing to back it up yet, further research needed.
thankfully someone actually read the article (which is pretty bad in terms of accurately representing its citations). One of the other articles cited in OP says:
Research published in BMJ Oncology found there had been 3.26 million cases in 2019 - 79% more than in 1990. But experts cautioned against reading too much into the findings. The research did not take into account a 40% rise in the total population, while factors such as better reporting may also have played a role. The team, of experts from around the world, including the US, China and the UK, agreed no firm conclusions could be drawn.
Deaths (as opposed to “incidents”) is a more accurate metric to track since it’s more reliable in terms of detection (obviously) and reporting:
Cancer killed more than a million under-50s in 2019, a rise of over 25% - but with the 40% population rise, this could actually indicate a falling death rate.
So “no firm conclusions” means what, in terms of the other comments here?
As far as I can tell, people are understandably a bit troubled, and a bit cross (since some of the proposed causes probably should have been dealt with a lot earlier). They’re maybe hastily jumping to theories about a few likely candidates. Do you blame them?
Or should we just do nothing? Wait, and put all our faith in…? What?
The vast majority of the things mentioned would do us absolutely no harm at all to avoid, or even legislate against as a precaution. So is there a good reason we should wait for “firm” conclusions?
The diffrence is “living in an ecological system” and “living in an economic system”.
