this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 130 points 1 week ago (13 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 1 week ago (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

We're on Lemmy, every evil in the world is the result of capitalism.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Ah yes, the famous capitalist powerhouse Soviet Union.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Agreed, the above doesn’t mesh with this variable

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Plastics permeate our tissues and people are surprised by this?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

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!

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Oh wow, this is really important context. That 79% figure is almost worthless

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago

The diffrence is "living in an ecological system" and "living in an economic system".

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Someone I went to high school with just died of colon cancer last week. Guy wasn't even 40.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Friend of a friend's husband died of colon cancer in 2016, he wasnt even 40 either.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There's so many factors. Pesticides, nitrates are prevalent in most meat products, lack of dietary fibre can increase risks of colon cancer and high cholesterol.

Not to mention micro plastics (though they've been around for longer than we've known I bet) and forever chemicals like PFAs (though not sure if they're cancerous??).

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Does anybody cook anymore? I have started cooking again for my girlfriend and honestly it's like having another job, it takes fucking ages every day. When I lived on my own I would sometimes go months without a hot meal, because realistically, how can you work full time and attend to the daily tasks of living? Genuinely, where is the time? I'm out for twelve hours of every day.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Easily: leftovers. Literally just cook on sunday. Takes like 1.5-2hrs. Make 10-12 servings. Dinner for 2 for 5-6 days. Eat it all week.

I have done this every week for my entire adult life and have never spent more than like 2hrs per week cooking unless I wanted to make something particularly difficult for fun.

Also, you can make big batches of stuff to freeze or can. Canning is easy: get a pressure cooker, buy some big mason jars - they're cheap and reusable, look up the pressure and time requirements (especially if the dish contains meat), and boom. Shelf stable food you can store in the pantry and eat whenever.

Meal prep ideas:

Spend like 3hrs making 10 dozen pierogies (potato & cheese and pork & mushroom & sauerkraut are my favorites), freeze half & boil/pan fry whenever. Eat the rest for the week with some sauerkraut or cucumber dill salad (umborksalat) as a side. Costs maybe 30 bucks for everything and makes food for 2 weeks (6 pierogies per serving). Make more if you want - it doesn't take much extra time.

Chinese style dumplings are the same as pierogies but with square wrappers and more ingredients. Buy wonton wrappers. Make filling with ground pork, garlic, green onion, msg, ginger, salt, pepper, soy sauce, vinegar. Add napa cabbage if you want to stretch the filling. Fill wonton wrappers. Make however many you want. Takes a few hours if you're gonna make a shitload, but it is easy - pop on a movie and make hundreds if you want. Freeze and boil whenever. Or make potstickers by heating oil in a pan, putting in fresh or frozen dumplings, cooking for a bit before adding some water before immediately covering with a lid. Cook a bit and they should release from the pan - scrape them up with a spatula if they don't.

Get a very large pot. Make a full pot of gumbo, red beans and sausage for red beans & rice, or split pea soup. You can make gallons of these very cheaply in the same time it'd take to make a smaller quantity. Freeze or can most of it. Cook rice for the week for gumbo or red beans and rice (20mins on the stove, 2mins of prep). Serve over rice (don't serve split pea soup over rice unless you're a psychopath). Done.

Make west african peanut soup. Made of sweet potatoes, peanut butter, chicken if you want, collard greens, tomatoes. Fucking delicious. Very filling and calorie dense. Like 25 bucks for a week of delicious soup. I make like 2kg when I do this. Could double batch and freeze/can half as well.

Jambalaya/jollof rice/other similar rice dishes. Make 10-12 servings for the week or double it and freeze half.

Lasagna or other pasta bake dishes. Make one dish for the week. Make another to freeze and pop in the oven to cook whenever. Serve with a quick salad.

Enchiladas. Same as pasta dishes (can freeze and cook later). Cook meat/other filling. Heat up a bunch of corn torrillas. Fill with filling. Put into a rectangular casserole dish with some enchilada sauce. Top with enchilada sauce and some cheese. Boom. 12 enchiladas - enough for a week. Especially if you make some cilantro-lime or 'spanish' rice to go with it (rice, boullion, onion, tomato paste, diced tomato, garlic, little oil, water) - throw it all in a pot, simmer 20mins, refrigerate, eat all week as a side dish. Maybe use canned refried beans as a side too.

Tacos. Shred up a rotisserie chicken. Pan fry with onions, garlic, peppers if you want (chipotles in adobo are my favorite. You could use salsa instead or jalapenos or whatever). Boom. Freeze or refrigerate. Heat up and put in tortillas whenever with some fresh cilantro/onion/hot sauce. Make rice as with enchiladas. Can serve with beans, too.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Yeah — I maybe cook 1-2 meals a week, and that usually involves some prepackaged ingredient that saves me time. The rest is quick like oatmeal, toast, etc, or I’m just ordering takeout. I don’t have the energy to cook a lot, nor do I want to spend my free time doing it after work.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Recently I went to Seattle's children's museum and when it was about to close I found my self staring at the cosmic particle fog tank. It's a tank that has low temperature evaporated alcohol in it which creates wisps of fog if highly energetic particles pass thru it. Well I didn't know what it was until I started noticing the wisps and remembering a YouTube video in the device. It was like a wisp every 10 seconds. Suddenly this family passed by and the little 3 or 4 year old kid approaches the box to see what was in it. The thing lit up like a freaking Christmas tree. Like 10 wisps per second as soon as the kid put his hands on the side of the glass. I looked at him thinking, you don't know, just live out your life in happiness kid.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That’s wild. Wonder why child was extra radioactive

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I was totally bewildered. I should have run to the parents to show them. It was just crazy. Maybe they gave him a hammer and a bunch of smoke detectors the day before.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

possibly leukemia and what you were seeing is the effects of treatment...

fuck all cancer.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, what if he had cancer treatment recently! That could have been? Or tracer fluid for MRI.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

would be an injectable radiation therapy or a radiotracer for a PET or SPECT scan. afaik radioactive tracers aren't used in MRI or regular CT scanning

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

hope its not from deburring the chinese plastic dildos

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Stay safe and use heavy lead dildos or the self glowing Marie Curie radium dildos instead.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Better back that colonoscopy screening up earlier then. I think it’s recommended at age 45 in the US, but I’m guessing insurance won’t want to cover screenings at 5-year intervals for an extra 20 years because money, dear boy.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

It was recently dropped from 50 to 45 in the US. Was that also done for other countries?

Regardless of improved detection, the most likely explanation is increased obesity rates, which is covered in the article.

Last time I pointed this out, the toxin and micro plastics people blamed chemical exposure for increased obesity. They don't want the Boogeyman to be a fat guy.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Obesity tracks with this. Maybe not the direct cause, there might be some underlying cause for both, but excess fat absolutely does increase your risk of cancer. I'm pretty sure being big in any way does - if there is more of you, more cells, more chance of mutation.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Well yeah, we're all shitting out microplastics all the time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

We probably aren't shitting them out fast enough.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

........okay fine, I have a lump around my ass ring and maybe this convinced me to finally get it checked

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Could it be the single use micro plastics….

Older people have cancer and a lot of doctors just call it aging. That’s how common it is. It’s normalized. Now that the younger are catching up they are suddenly concerned that this is a problem.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I bet it ends up being caused by something far more innocuous than any of the first guesses that come to mind.

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