This article kind of made a mess of the numbers. At one point it suggests the mortality rate increased, but that’s not what the actual research shows.
From OG article:
“Our study showed that the global morbidity of early-onset cancer increased from 1990 to 2019, while mortality and DALYs slightly decreased”
The vast majority of the raw numbers increasing is because of the word population going from 5.3 billion to 7.75 billion in that same time. The next cause does seem to be diagnostic ability, especially when looking at what cancers saw the biggest increase.
A lot blaming pfas and microplastics, but obesity is up too. According to the cdc that increases risk significantly in 13 types of cancer. Of course now looking up some are linking pfas to weight gain so maybe you guys are right!
There needs to be a lot more studies on obesity and why it's gone up so much. I don't buy the "more sedentary lifestyle" argument. Our mobility hasn't changed THAT much in the last 50 years, at least not enough to explain the absolutely skyrocketing cases of obesity.
There's a big link between poverty and obesity. People in poverty tend to be more active due to more physically demanding jobs, so it feels like the cause has to be from cheap food. While a lot of people might immediately look to high fructose corn syrup, I'm not sure it's that simple. Obesity rates are rising even in places that don't use HFCS in everything. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some additive or preservative that started to get heavily used in the last few decades that's had horrible, unintended consequences.
Additives or preservatives aren't likely to be the core issue. At the end of the day, by far the most significant factor for weight change is calorie intake vs expenditure. The new drugs like Semaglutide fundamentally work by significantly suppressing hunger and increasing satiety, for instance. I'm not sure what the precise data looks like, but in general, people are less social, go out less, spend a lot more time sitting on their phones or computers, and are generally a bit more stressed. All of the is going to contribute to eating more and moving less.
There's also a big link between lack of sleep and both obesity and cancer (and dozens of other health problems).
Western society has glorified not getting enough sleep as though it makes you manlier or better in some way. It doesn't. It just makes you die sooner.
We've moved to an "always on" society with the proliferation of the internet. With this comes disrupted circadian rhythms and even more reasons/excuses to not follow a regular or beneficial sleep schedule.
Sugar and refined carbohydrates are two big culprits. Then changing the balance of HDL-cholesterol to LDL-cholesterol changes with weight gain making it all worse and possibly leading to a positive feedback loop. The historic denigration of all fats, good and bad, helped to further tilt the HDL to LDL in the population making lots of people less healthy. It isn't HFCS, it is the over use of sugar in most of our food. This is especially true in North America, but then we exported much of the same food tech to the rest of the world who did the same.
All that processed food? Full of refined carbs and sugar. Drinks? Often full of sugar. Cheap food? Usually highly processed and refined, so more sugar and refined carbs.
You need carbs for energy and fats to keep everything going with balance of nutrients and protein. Any of that out of balance and health suffers. Too little fat can even kill you (rabbit starvation/protein poisoning). The modern diet in North America is terrible because we were told good things were bad and carbs were good. So we ate too little of the good fats, too much of the refined carbs, and too much sugar. Now were here, increased heat disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer.
And obesity is only going to increase since all the grocery overlords have jacked the costs of everything through the roof while their prepackaged boxes of sodium and fat mush seem to be the new staple for everyone.
I wonder how much of this is actually just the result of better detection and screening processes. Not saying it's not a problem, but if it's just because we're getting better at spotting these things early it might actually be a good thing?
I only read the headline and not the article, so I'm not sure if this was mentioned. Would the main cause be from melanoma caused by UV? Melanoma rates in Australia went through the roof when we had that big ozone hole above our country.
Not sure if it still reaches Australia but we've still got the ozone hole here in NZ - and apparently cancer season is starting early this year thanks to climate change and water vapour from that Tongan volcano last year!
The deterministic effects are health effects that displayed symptoms due to the killing of tissue stem cells in those exposed to ionizing radiation at more than threshold doses for tissue reactions. The threshold dose for tissue reactions is defined as a dose to induce tissue injury at the level of 1% incidence [7]. Typical early effects resulting in symptoms appearing over several weeks after exposure to ionizing radiation, are acomia and permanent infertility, as well as skin lesions and hematopoietic disorders. Cataracts are a typical late effect with symptoms arising after a long latent period extending to decades after exposure to ionizing radiation. The threshold doses for acomia, permanent infertility and cataracts are 3, 2.5–6, and 0.5 Gy delivered to the whole body, respectively. When pregnant women are exposed to ionizing radiation, embryonic death and malformation are the deterministic effects, which are provoked in fetuses. The threshold doses for both are 0.1 Gy as whole body exposure dose (0.1 Sv, here, the sievert [Sv] is a unit of radiation dose used for radiation protection to assess the health risk on humans), which is the minimal threshold dose among the various deterministic effects. On the other hand, the stochastic effects are health effects displayed stochastically by accumulating DNA mutations in cells of the tissues exposed to ionizing radiation. Typical stochastic effects are solid cancer and leukemia. Therefore, health effects provoked by ionizing radiation at below 0.1 Gy as a whole body exposure dose (0.1 Sv) are only the stochastic effects. There is still no evidence, however, for the stochastic effects provoked by whole body exposure to ionizing radiation of less than 0.1 Gy (0.1 Sv).
This comment comes across as horrible misinformed. If you want to make an argument for tritium being dangerous even at very low concentrations, make that argument. But tritium has nothing to do with calcium, and releasing low concentration tritium from nuclear power plants has been standard procedure for as long as we've had nuclear power plants. It's not unique to Fukushima. France dumps more Tritium in a year than Fukushima will ever dump.
The deterministic effects are health effects that displayed symptoms due to the killing of tissue stem cells in those exposed to ionizing radiation at more than threshold doses for tissue reactions. The threshold dose for tissue reactions is defined as a dose to induce tissue injury at the level of 1% incidence [7]. Typical early effects resulting in symptoms appearing over several weeks after exposure to ionizing radiation, are acomia and permanent infertility, as well as skin lesions and hematopoietic disorders. Cataracts are a typical late effect with symptoms arising after a long latent period extending to decades after exposure to ionizing radiation. The threshold doses for acomia, permanent infertility and cataracts are 3, 2.5–6, and 0.5 Gy delivered to the whole body, respectively. When pregnant women are exposed to ionizing radiation, embryonic death and malformation are the deterministic effects, which are provoked in fetuses. The threshold doses for both are 0.1 Gy as whole body exposure dose (0.1 Sv, here, the sievert [Sv] is a unit of radiation dose used for radiation protection to assess the health risk on humans), which is the minimal threshold dose among the various deterministic effects. On the other hand, the stochastic effects are health effects displayed stochastically by accumulating DNA mutations in cells of the tissues exposed to ionizing radiation. Typical stochastic effects are solid cancer and leukemia. Therefore, health effects provoked by ionizing radiation at below 0.1 Gy as a whole body exposure dose (0.1 Sv) are only the stochastic effects. There is still no evidence, however, for the stochastic effects provoked by whole body exposure to ionizing radiation of less than 0.1 Gy (0.1 Sv).
You will have factors more dangerous levels of radiation if you spend much time in the sun.
Interesting there are cities in the US that have background levels of natural radiation, levels higher than that allowed at nuclear plants. Check out places in Colorado. Yet they have cancer rates no higher than the national average. Some lower.
The ocean alone has enough natural radiation that if we mined it out of the water, it could power the world for thousands of years. And actually there are ways to mine it for about 10c a kwh. That is economical but far higher than land based mining at about 2c per kwh thus no point in doing so.