> "However, the effects of individual exposures remain largely unknown. To study early-life exposures and their implications for multiple cancer types will require prospective cohort studies with dedicated biobanking and data collection technologies." What that means is analytical body-burden data collection should be a medical norm, for a variety of substances: polychlorinated biphenyls, triazine herbicides (atrazin…
It would be nice to have this information to see if any trends are discovered (all of this is theoretical, I question whether measuring excreted compounds rather than stores is is relevant but that’s a separate point) however it is unclear what value this information will provide and seems unlikely it will generate anything actionable. With that in mind, it’s hard to justify the colossal costs that would be involved…
I would have to figure that chemicals sitting in fat cells that rarely divide are probably not causing cancer. Cancer occurs mostly in epithelial tissue; in my case, the germ cell. Excreted compounds are probably a better measure of actual blood levels. I'm not a nephrologist or anything, though.
>A small prospective study
will almost certainly find nothing, because the rate of early-onset cancer is too low to detect changes in a small population. You probably need >100k participants to have a good chance of finding anything.
>it is unclear what value this information will provide
I mean, that's the billion-dollar question, isn't it? Should probably try to control for obesity first, it's the most obvious candidate (changes since 1990, so not, e.g., smoking), but it certainly wasn't my problem (BMI 21).