Misconceptions About Pollution and Cancer

THE PUBLIC has numerous misconceptions about the relationship between environmental pollution and human cancer.

The first is that cancer rates are soaring. Cancer death rates overall in the United States (adjusted for age and smoking) have been steady or decreasing since 1950. Deaths from stomach, cervical, uterine, and rectal cancer have been decreasing; those that have been increasing are primarily lung cancer (due to smoking—as is 30 per cent of all U.S. cancer deaths), melanoma (possibly due to sunburns), and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Cancer is fundamentally a degenerative disease of old age, although external factors can increase cancer rates (e.g., cigarette smoking in humans) or decrease them (e.g., caloric restriction in rodents). As life expectancy continues to rise, cancer rates (unadjusted for age) also rise.

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Bruce N. Ames

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THE PUBLIC has numerous misconceptions about the relationship between environmental pollution and human cancer.

The first is that cancer rates are soaring. Cancer death rates overall in the United States (adjusted for age and smoking) have been steady or decreasing since 1950. Deaths from stomach, cervical, uterine, and rectal cancer have been decreasing; those that have been increasing are primarily lung cancer (due to smoking—as is 30 per cent of all U.S. cancer deaths), melanoma (possibly due to sunburns), and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Cancer is fundamentally a degenerative disease of old age, although external factors can increase cancer rates (e.g., cigarette smoking in humans) or decrease them (e.g., caloric restriction in rodents). As life expectancy continues to rise, cancer rates (unadjusted for age) also rise.