Contradicting Previous Study, Cancer Risk Has Strong Environmental Component (washingtonpost.com)

The Real Dr John writes: A new study published in the journal Nature provides evidence that intrinsic risk factors contribute only modestly (less than ~10–30% of lifetime risk) to cancer development in humans (abstract). An earlier study had found that the more stem-cell divisions that occurred in a given tissue over a lifetime, the more likely it was to become cancerous. They said that though some cancers clearly had strong outside links – such as liver cancers caused by hepatitis C or lung cancer resulting from smoking – there were others for which the variation was explained mainly by defects in stem-cell division. The new research shows that the correlation between stem-cell division and cancer risk does not distinguish between the effects of internal (genetic) and external (environmental) factors such as chemical toxicity and radiation. They also found that the rates of endogenous mutation accumulation by internal processes are not sufficient to account for the observed cancer risks. The authors conclude that cancer risk is heavily influenced by environmental factors.

Comments

Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

My mom died of breast cancer. She never really smoke or drank, and ate fairly healthy, at least by the standards of the day. However for a lot of years we lived next door to farmfields that they sprayed with pesticides from airplanes, and it got to the point where we stopped drinking water from our well.

Makes me wonder if that could be a connection.

Re:Interesting.

[dwywit]

I've told my daughter that hairdressing is not a career option. Have you smelled some of the "product" they use? It becomes clearer with a little research - coaltar or benzine-derivative hair dyes. Doing your own hair once in a while - fine. Exposing yourself daily to that stuff *has* to have an effect.

Re:Interesting.

[Locke2005]

Wanna know the best protection against breast cancer? Popping out a new kid every year. Yeah, environmental factors play a role in cancer, but some of the "controllable" environmental factors may be worse than the cancer risk.

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or she just had bad luck to not have listened to studies telling her studies telling her to eat organic, have a baby before 30, don't use the pill for protracted periods of time, don't be overweight, be athletic, drink lots of water, don't drink too much alcohol, and don't be BRCA+.

See, if she had done ALL of those things then it would have been bad luck to have breast cancer. So, obviously, it's her fault.

Re:Interesting.

[RobertM1968]

Wanna know the best protection against breast cancer? Popping out a new kid every year.

Did that line work?

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, statistics of 1 is not really statistics, anything can happen.

But let me give you a more numeric anecdotal story. An old farmer died of prostate cancer few years ago, and he told me that almost every farmer in the region that he had known had died of prostate cancer too. We are talking about 20-30 people.

http://www.cancer.org/cancer/c...

So normalized data shows 15% chance, but for older farmers based on that farmer's testimony, it's about 80% if you ignore heart disease deaths.

So yes, I believe we'll kill ourselves with the chemicals we produce and spray on ourselves. Anecdotal evidence shows that too. But studies? Which company would fund long term studies into cancer rates of their products? And which government would do that? They don't even acknowledge that Agent Orange fucked up Vietnam.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.snopes.com/photos/m...

Re:Interesting.

[tempmpi]

Well, the pill is an environmental factor, but it works both ways. It seems to increase breast and cervical cancer rates, but decreases the risk for Ovarian, womb and bowel cancers.

Re:Interesting.

[jblues]

I read a study once that most men die with (but not of) prostate cancer.

Re:Interesting.

[JoeMerchant]

The point where you probably should have stopped drinking from your well was probably a few months after the first pesticide use started.

In Florida, there's a huge difference between shallow wells and the deep aquifers. In the 1950s, when my father was growing up, all you had to do was dig a hole 12" deep and most days there would be clean drinking water there. When I was growing up in the 1970s, the shallow water table had dropped from just below the surface to 10 to 20' down, but you wouldn't drink shallow water anymore because it was all so polluted by then. If you were going to drink well water, you wanted to taste the sulfur in it to be sure it was coming from the deep (160'+) aquifer.

Now, there's talk of "recharging" the deep aquifers with river water - what could possibly go wrong with that scheme?

Re:Interesting.

[JoeMerchant]

It's funny how that affects some people and not others. My grandmother was a hairdresser for 50 years, owned her own shop and was still giving "permanent waves" the year she retired (aged 75), she lived on to 96 years old and the main problem she had from the hairdressing was bursitis in the shoulders.

Of course, her mother also lived into her late '90s and chewed tobacco all her life.

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing that increases the risk of cervical cancer. Drowning in kids aside, it's hardly a solid win.

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also each pregnancy reduces your life expectation, regardless of cancer.

Re:Interesting.

[HiThere]

In Bangladesh there was also a difference between shallow wells and deep wells. The water from the deep wells was loaded with arsenic. So deep doesn't automatically mean good, even if it hasn't been recharged.

And bottled water is frequently contaminated with plasticizers. And distilled water is lacking in trace minerals (bad ionic balance). And water run through ionic filters generally contains too much salt (as well as plasticizers). Etc.

I generally drink tap water, and hope the water company is doing a decent job.

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

my grandmother had 12 kids actually 12!! ad she lived till 82

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you calculate the standard error of the mean with that sample size?
Statistics with a single sample is hardly worth mentioning. Proves absolutely nothing.

Re: Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm terribly sorry to ruin your day:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/us/flint-michigan-detroit-water-supply-lead.html

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be a twit.

The parent poster proves exactly what was intended: That certain factors apparently do not affect certain people in any measurable way.

That's all. There was no attempt at skewing statistics or anything like that. Just an example or two.

Relax.

Re: Interesting.

[sonamchauhan]

Or else, proved nothing. There is not a way of knowing whether his relatives would have lived years or decades longer without these occupational exposures.

Re: Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or years or decades less. It's not impossible that there could be latent protective effects in other areas from chewing tobacco or being a hairdresser.

Re:Interesting.

[YoungManKlaus]

Thats why you wear one-use gloves when dying ...

Re: Interesting.

[Applehu Akbar]

Anecdote n: A data point that supports the other guy's hypothesis.

Re: Interesting.

[HiThere]

Yes, but so far the state hasn't taken over the local water company where I live.

Re:Interesting.

[dsmatthews9379]

Correct, your mother's risk of breast cancer could have been increased by her local environment, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Interesting.

[dsmatthews9379]

Men can get breast cancer too, but they can't pop out kids.

Re:Interesting.

[Swave An deBwoner]

I'm not saying that deep wells are necessarily free of arsenic, but your characterization of the cause of arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh is at odds with what was reported here:

http://science.time.com/2010/06/19/study-says-arsenic-poisons-millions-in-bangladesh%E2%80%94but-theyre-not-the-only-ones/

Millions of tube wells were drilled to provide villagers with clean water, but many of them were dug into shallow layers of ground that had naturally occurring arsenic, contaminating the water.

Re: Interesting.

[sonamchauhan]

Correct. Improbable for sure :) ... but not impossible.

I'll go with the probable option - its more ... certain. :)

No shit

[penguinoid]

Everyone who knew anything about the subject knew that cancer has a strong environmental component. What the previous study had done was merely verify something lots of people already expected, namely that cell division (and especially stem cell division) gave you a risk of cancer due to inherent mutation rates.

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem with science. You can have all the hypotheses you want, but then you have to prove them. Everyone may know better, but unfortunately, science requires actual data.

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting argument you have there. How exactly does one "prove" a hypothesis? A theory can be derived from one, and that theory can be disproven. The theory can even be reduced mathematically to something we can attempt to prove axiomatically, but at that point you have said goodbye to physical reality.

Have you said goodbye to reality?

Re:No shit

[penguinoid]

That's the problem with science. You can have all the hypotheses you want, but then you have to prove them. Everyone may know better, but unfortunately, science requires actual data.

I believe you meant, fortunately science requires actual data.

Re:No shit

[manu0601]

fortunately science requires actual data.

Except cosmology and string theory, which are exempted from experimental testing but are still called science

Re:No shit

[penguinoid]

Nothing says the testing has to be by performing experiments. That just happens to be the simplest way to test a theory.

Re: No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

BS. We have historical evidence of local, state, and federal governments around the world ignoring scientific evidence and proceeding with business as usual. In the meantime, corporations hire shills and PR lobbyists to make the rounds in the media to deny, delay, and distract while people die from their products. Rinse, repeat.

Freeways / Cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Living next to high-traffic areas has long been associated with cancer risk (specifically leukemia). This may or may not have contributed to the cancer-cluster observations around power stations which generally serve greater urban areas and have high traffic. I'm sure living in a city adds as surely as pesticides from a farming community or poisons from fracking. The world is a deadly place, on a long enough timeframe.

Need more studies !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose an extensive study on the effect of studies that contradict studies.

Environmental mean...?

[PuckSR]

Can't wait to see all the anecdotes about chemicals that cause cancer.

This study is not stating that if we all lived in a paleo-era utopia that we wouldn't get any cancer.
It is simply stating that cancer isn't pre-cooked into our lives. If we lived in a perfectly sterile environment and did not expose ourselves to any energy of any kind, we would be very unlikely to develop cancer. We would just die due to a vitamin D deficiency and a lack of human contact.

Follow the money

[Anonymous Coward]

So who's funding each of these teams? I'm willing to bet you can't trust either of them.

The healthy continue to blame the sick...

[Anonymous Coward]

The media is portraying this study as conflicting with the last study that said "cancer is mostly bad luck."

Yet if you review this study, the popular interpretation really shouldn't change.

Say a given individual has a baseline 5% chance of developing lung cancer. They live in an urban area. This pushes up their cancer risk to 5.2%.

If they move to the peaceful forest, it may reduce their cancer chance to 4.95%

Yet this study is going to be used to once again blame the victims of cancer, that those who are healthy can justify their "good choices" instead of acknowledging that their dice roll came up in their favor. They can continue to assuage their fear of illness - when the reality is that HALF of all people will get cancer over their lifetime; in the developing world 70% will die from it or its complications and in the developing world 45%...

So, you can live your life trying to avoid everything that might give you cancer and not really have a life at all, or you can stop worrying, try to enjoy your life, and stop paying attention to this nonsense. Just don't judge others when they get cancer unless they smoke like chimneys.

Re:The healthy continue to blame the sick...

[Coren22]

in the developing world 70% will die from it or its complications and in the developing world 45%...

Did you perhaps mean developed on that second one? Otherwise I have to ask, which is it?

Three part cancer risk

[Yergle143]

I work in the Cancer field here's my take home take.
The Individual probability for Cancer risk is in three parts.
1/3 Genetics: Beyond your control, a complex interplay of genes can lead to cancer.
1/3: Environment: Within your control there is a known influence of diet, chemicals, radiation, pollution etc. Lifestyle in other words can impact this component.
1/3 Random Chance: Billions of cell divisions occur to in our lives. The protein machinery that makes this happen has incredible fidelity but mistakes inevitably occur and this DNA damage can cause cancer, usually later in life. There is no lifestyle choice that an individual can make to prevent this damage from occurring. I would also lump into random chance the random inflammatory insults that occur over a lifetime -- a cold at a young age that damaged a subset of lung tissue that mutated the p53 gene giving rise to etc.
The linked paper/story reveals a raging controversy between constituencies for each part of the cancer risk pie. The losers are the patients/public who are misled by either an indifference to risk aversion or a single minded overestimate of the benefits of lifestyle. Its all three.
 

Re:Three part cancer risk

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a lot of old relatives that have smoked multiple packs/day since youth (I guess it used to be the in thing). And while a few have died of heart failure (past the age of 60), no one in my family AFAIK has ever had cancer. Most of my relatives have lived into their 80's and 90's too despite poor habits. Strong suspicion I'm part Númenórean.

Re:Three part cancer risk

[turkeydance]

that means 2/3 of the risk of cancer is unaffected by efforts to avoid it.

Re:Three part cancer risk

[tlhIngan]

1/3 Random Chance: Billions of cell divisions occur to in our lives. The protein machinery that makes this happen has incredible fidelity but mistakes inevitably occur and this DNA damage can cause cancer, usually later in life. There is no lifestyle choice that an individual can make to prevent this damage from occurring. I would also lump into random chance the random inflammatory insults that occur over a lifetime -- a cold at a young age that damaged a subset of lung tissue that mutated the p53 gene giving rise to etc.

This is also beneficial because it's how evolution happens - random genetic mutations potentially give us traits that make us more (or less) successful at surviving.

The problem is the cell has lots of mechanisms to detect copy errors - there are proofreaders to ensure the right bases are joined together, there are cell division mechanisms that detect abnormalities and cause the cell to commit suicide, etc. And they're remarkably effective, but not 100%. That's good in that random genetic mutations are necessary for life, but bad in that sometimes the mechanisms fail to detect a cancer condition and cause cell suicide. (It's a problem of large numbers - even if it was 99.99999% effective, enough cells divide all the time that the failure of detecting the mutation means you will get lots of them in the end.

Random errors happen. But they aren't all bad, and they happen remarkably often due to the law of large numbers. Not every mutation will turn into cancer, after all.

Re:Three part cancer risk

[Yergle143]

Yep. But cancer is complex, not all die from it, and you have to assess it tissue by tissue. The male probability of prostate cancer goes with your age but most succumb of something else.

Re:Three part cancer risk

[Yergle143]

Remember it's only mutations to the germline (eggs and sperm) that propagate so the developmental buildup of damage is comparatively silent in an evolutionary sense unless it stops you from passing on your genes. Cancer sucks, in the modern world the old folks can still contribute but the alarm clock for the reaper was set during the stone age.

Re:Three part cancer risk

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a very very simplistic way of looking at it.

If your entire life you are smoking and working in an asbestos project without proper breathing apparatus, then that 1/3 environmental becomes 99% environmental.

Same with breast cancer - 90%+ chance of breast cancer by age 60 if you have some specific genes. So where is rest of the pie?

Talking about 1/3 this, 1/3 that is stupid and simplistic. Don't do it, especially when it comes to individual cases.

Re:Three part cancer risk

[penguinoid]

that means 2/3 of the risk of cancer is unaffected by efforts to avoid it.

Keep in mind that this is probably an estimate and definitely after accounting for the many many things we do to avoid cancer, particularly government banning or requiring warning labels or use restrictions on carcinogenic chemicals. If we decided it was OK to use highly carcinogenic chemicals as food flavorings then suddenly the ~33% environmental contribution would probably rise to ~90%.

Re:Three part cancer risk

[khallow]

that means 2/3 of the risk of cancer is unaffected by efforts to avoid it.

Depends on the efforts. penguinoid already mentioned how you can make it worse. If on the other hand, you have nanoscale machinery in your body actively hunting down and destroying pre-cancerous growths, it's going to be a lot lower.

everything gives you cancer

[turkeydance]

Joe Jackson https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

inb4 new study contradicts this study which...

[Anonymous Coward]

contracts another study.

The problem with trying to work out how people get cancer is you cannot control the variables. If you could lock 500 people up in cages for their entire lives then we might finally get to the bottom of exactly what causes cancers, but until then there are simply too many variables in diet, environment, electromagnetic fields, sunlight exposure, cosmic ray exposure etc etc etc.

They might as well bite the bullet and say exposure to the planet earth increases your chance of getting cancer to 1 in 3 and have done with it.

Funding Wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone has $100M US, I'd be glad to research any conclusions they'd like...

Known for some time

[nospam007]

"was explained mainly by defects in stem-cell division"

And lots of those defects are happening in your fat for some reason, causing also all sorts of inflammation, besides the cancer angle.

So you'd better get to that single digit fat percentage if you want to live a long healthy life.

Radionuclide effluents from Nuclear power and Coal

[MrKaos]

We have to exclude enriched radionuclides from Nuclear Power plants as an environmental factor causing cancer or any form of genetic disease because Nuclear power is not part of the environment and anything that gets out is not part of 'normal' operations. Even if it did it wouldn't be that bad anyway, our generation should not be concerned, it's NIMG.

The (un)enriched radionuclides from coal are really bad though. Even knowing they are there will cause generations of cancer so it's better to not know.

I am a certifed chemophobe

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I certified myself as a chemophobe. I avoid lots of household chemicals, pesticides, food additives, etc. I avoid x-rays, but I did recently get a foot x-ray's after a few months of variable painful aching. Appears negative.
My inclination and belief is that the genetics/environmental exposure issue will probably come down to a greater emphasis on the exposure side than has been historically thought. Although add the factoid that as people live longer there is a greater chance of getting cancer due to 1. declining effectiveness of DNA self repair mechanism and 2. longer time means a higher chance to get cancer, no matter what the cause. (I'm open to counter opinions or refinement of point 2). And, I may even prefer that exposure to chemicals and radiation is a greater cause, 'cause I like and enjoy believing that chemical companies and nuclear companies are bad, evil entities. (Mr. Burns of the Simpons).
But I also noted how this version of this story is getting 'legs.' But checking in with the original scientific articles in Science, I don't see any clear cut 'winner' between the two sides of the two recent articles. I see a bit of unseemly behavior and arguement by at least 1.25 the two sides more appropriate to Jerry Springer or slashdot. I prefer my scientists to be saints, but we don't have enough saints to go around. I have no such expectations from slashdot, which is often like watching roadkill's final twitchings.
This is an issue that maybe, or probably, in 10 or 20 years will have a strong consensus. In the meantime, I've already spent way too much time crafting this little homily.
Oh looky! Another snarky slashdot comment!