Rising Cancer Rates in Young People: A Follow-Up

Rising rates of cancer in young people are back in the news.

In a post I published a few months back, we looked at a podcast released by the BBC World Service on how certain forms of cancer are becoming more prevalent among the young and why this might be.

I commented at the time on how exposure to environmental toxins, as a possible contributing factor, failed to get a mention anywhere in the piece.

But this week, ABC News in Australia published a documentary on the very same topic—with one crucial difference: invisible chemical nasties were at the centre of the discussion about potential causes.

The 45-minute video (which is well worth a watch) explains that this uptick in what it terms ‘early-onset cancers’ is particularly pronounced in Australia; the country sits atop this grim leaderboard.

Increases in the incidence of ten different cancers have been well documented, we’re told, including a 150% rise in rates of liver cancer in 30–39-year-olds, a 200% rise in rates of pancreatic cancer, and a giant 500% rise in rates of prostate cancer.

Some of these increases, such as the huge hike in the number of prostate cancer cases, can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that we’ve got better at detecting and diagnosing cancer. But the documentary makes clear that this explanation doesn’t account for the trend entirely.

This is actually refreshing to hear. ‘We’re just getting better at diagnosing diseases’ is an (often well-meaning) refrain I frequently have thrown back at me during discussions of whether there truly is anything especially (and increasingly) toxic about the modern world and the extent to which this is something we should worry about.

While it’s obviously true to some degree—our powers of diagnosis surely are becoming ever more sophisticated—I think it can also serve as a comforting story for us to wrap ourselves in, as part of our general project of telling ourselves that things in the world are just getting better and better. There’s no need to worry. We can’t possibly be sicker than the generations that came before us.

It’s not that everyone believes this, of course, but it’s a narrative that’s dominant in politics and popular culture.

Like the BBC podcast, the ABC documentary also comments on how the cancers found in young people tend to be discovered at a later stage—and are often more aggressive when they are found.

The unfortunate thing is that the higher cancer rates exhibited by those in their 30s and 40s today won’t disappear as this cohort ages; they’ll stay with them. Older people are already more susceptible to cancer, and this susceptibility will only become more pronounced as the young adults of today become the older people of tomorrow.

There are obviously some exceptions, but cancer doesn’t tend to develop as a result of acute exposure to some nefarious substance. Usually it’s the product of sustained exposure to one or more carcinogens over time.

This means that if more people under 50 are getting cancer today, it’s probably because of what they came into contact with as children—or even earlier—so there’s no quick fix.

We can do things like lower the age at which we start screening for cancer, increase awareness, and encourage behaviour change generally, but it could be the case that higher cancer rates among the current crop of 30- and 40-somethings are somewhat baked in (though, of course, positive changes of any sort and size never hurt).

We should be directing a good chunk of our thinking towards considerations of what we can do to clean up the world we inhabit so that future generations don’t suffer the same fate as this one.

Glass bottles cause more microplastic contamination than plastic bottles

There was a lot of reporting recently on a surprising study published by French researchers that found that liquid sold in glass bottles may actually contain more microplastic particles than liquid sold in plastic bottles—and in some cases, a great deal more.

It’s thought that the main source of microplastic contamination from glass bottles isn’t actually the bottles themselves, but the caps. The paint on the caps likely comes loose due to abrasion and friction during transport and storage.

Water and wine weren’t too bad; it was soft drinks that were found to be the most contaminated.

The researchers aren’t yet certain why different kinds of drinks exhibited different levels of contamination. It could be that the paint, caps, and storage methods used for each type of drink aren’t the same. It could also be that some liquids more effectively absorb microplastic particles than others, for whatever reasons.

The good news is that the researchers outline a cleaning method—which involves simply blowing the caps with air and rinsing them with water and alcohol—that manufacturers could easily employ and that would reduce the level of contamination significantly (if they were inclined to do so).

It’s also good news that it’s not the case that the glass per se is somehow shedding microplastics. That would be very bad (and very annoying).

I think using glass food containers and glass bottles at home and generally seeking, wherever possible, to replace the plastic present in our lives with glass alternatives is still the way to go.

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