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I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

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Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#351
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those mini factories have gotten much cleaner over the years, yet we still see a 30% increase in young adult cancers over 1970s levels. So while it's a potential contributor, it seems there could be more at play. Edit: why downvote?

How much cleaner have they gotten, and how much more miles do these factories get driven? Taking a look at https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-miles (the first useful result I could find), highway vehicle miles have almost tripled since the 1970s (1.1 trillion miles in 1970 vs 3.2 in 2019). Have cars gotten 70% cleaner in the same timespan?

It's not about miles driven. It's about air quality in cities.

Just looking at efficiency, we see that people get 50% more miles per gallon today than in 1978. This doesn't even include impact from emmissions equipment, electric/hybrid cars, etc. Plus, most highway miles are not in cities. Pollutants can disperse and settle out (not ideal in general, but relevant to air quality it is positive). They also have lower densities of people in the area to affect, which should affect the overall population numbers less.

According to the EPA, cars (and trucks and busses) are 99% cleaner today than in the 70s.

https://www.epa.gov/transportation-air-pollution-and-climate...

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I live in Belgium coming from Italy and it's scary how many people I know gets cancer here. Like someone i know every few months gets it (and I'm not talking about just old people. A couple guys i know got it in their 20s). And it's all people relatively healthy. Compare that to Italy where nobody I know does any effort to be healthy, eats lots of red meat (we do like our pork meat but it's all local stuff), sm…

...eh, it's the fries , trust me ;)

That's indeed the number 1 suspect! All that reused oil everyone is ingurgitating at least once a week XD

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I live in Belgium coming from Italy and it's scary how many people I know gets cancer here. Like someone i know every few months gets it (and I'm not talking about just old people. A couple guys i know got it in their 20s). And it's all people relatively healthy. Compare that to Italy where nobody I know does any effort to be healthy, eats lots of red meat (we do like our pork meat but it's all local stuff), sm…

Vitamin D deficiency is probably playing a not insignificant part in what you're seeing.

I still think it's pollution. There are many other countries with low levels of D which are ranking much better than Belgium https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/global-cancer-data-by-cou...

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#354

This is one of the things where it matters more how healthy/unpolluted your environment is . I'd dare to say that a not-so-phisically-active moderate-smoker living in a less polluted environment has way lower cancer risk than a bio-vegan athlete buddhist monk living in a polluted industrial hellhole. I'd wish we lived in a world where we could actually address chemical, air-particulate +/- microplastics pollution ser…

I expected after COVID there would be much more focus on air control/monitoring. How nice would it be to have constant air measurements in neighbourhoods and inside houses. And not only CO particles, but a wide variety. Unfortunately I see hardly any focus on it anymore.

I got a CO2 sensor too, cheap but not entry level (about €125). It also does TVOC, PM1.0 and PM2.5. One reason was I "balloon" sealed an unused chimney (old house) for the winter, that was the main driver of ventilation (and drafts).

If I don't crack a window, me, desk-working in a ~85m³ room pushes the reported CO2 from 400 to nearly 800 ppm by lunchtime, though the device is close to (not on) my desk which probably skews it a bit. I don't have any data to compare though, I might remove the balloon when weather improves next month to see.

There's also a gas hob(!) in the adjacent kitchen, the other VOC/PM readings are elevated for as long as 12 hours (depending on how badly my cooking went :), even with a hob extractor fan running and permanently open intake vents.

The speed of CO2 increase and persistence of the effects of cooking were both a surprise to me.

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"eventually will wipe any individual out." Sure, eventually. It's one thing if people are getting cancer or having heart attacks later in life. It's a little concerning when a fairly large number of younger people are afflicted. The rate of cancer has risen about 30% for young people since the seventies. So it seems that there's something wrong in our environment or lifestyles that could be increasing risk. That's ve…

From the article: Better detection is also a likely contributor.

Yeah, but I would be more interested in the other two stated causes - environmental and lifestyle factors. These would contribute to a net increase and/or earlier onset.

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#356

This is one of the things where it matters more how healthy/unpolluted your environment is . I'd dare to say that a not-so-phisically-active moderate-smoker living in a less polluted environment has way lower cancer risk than a bio-vegan athlete buddhist monk living in a polluted industrial hellhole. I'd wish we lived in a world where we could actually address chemical, air-particulate +/- microplastics pollution ser…

This. I live in Belgium coming from Italy and it's scary how many people I know gets cancer here. Like someone i know every few months gets it (and I'm not talking about just old people. A couple guys i know got it in their 20s). And it's all people relatively healthy. Compare that to Italy where nobody I know does any effort to be healthy, eats lots of red meat (we do like our pork meat but it's all local stuff), sm…

What do you think it is about Belgium (a small country but by no means homogenous) that makes it more carcinogous than Italy? In the 40 years that I've lived here I've only know one or two cases of young people getting cancer.

Some stats do seem to confirm your anecdote: Belgium gets 345.8 cases / 100K (6th highest in the world) and Italy 290.6 / 100K (24th highest).

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#357
post #133

I think healthy/unhealthy is not just about "very healthy diet, good fitness routine, good sleep, low stress, and no other health issues" It's actually also about regularly stressing your body with things like cold/hot exposure (using natural elements/seasons), for example a pragmatic daily fitness (for example commuting with a bike) instead of a more 'artificial' fitness in a gym, an organic diet foraged yourself (w…

This all seems like bad advice stemming from some naturalistic fallacy. >a pragmatic daily fitness (for example commuting with a bike) instead of a more 'artificial' fitness For example this just seems random. Driving a bike is not even more natural (were there bikes in the EEA) and if anything will just expose you to more polluted air, and increase your risk of dying by a car crash compared to gym alternatives. This…

"expose you to more polluted air" It's actually quite wrong, compared to cars for example https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/13/cyclists...

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expected after COVID there would be much more focus on air control/monitoring. How nice would it be to have constant air measurements in neighbourhoods and inside houses. And not only CO particles, but a wide variety. Unfortunately I see hardly any focus on it anymore.

I bought a CO2 sensor, and found that the CO2 levels rise to unhealthy levels in like half an hour in my room without opening my window. Since then I only sleep with a window slightly open, and open it periodically during the day. I also run an air purifier all the time, but I cannot yet measure it's efficacy, because a particle counter is like 2-3× more expensive than a CO2 sensor, so I haven't invested in it yet.

invest in plants.

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#359
post #336
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for we need to make space for the next generation (only adding people to planet earth would not be sustainable, as resources are scarce - imagine nobody would ever die). Being on this planet for a limited time period makes it more important to make the right choices, because we have only one life. No. Living longer means we have to live with our decisions. People who live short lives don't have to live with decisions…

> followed by heat dissipation because humans are all 100 watts space heaters. Well that's an.. interesting take

People talk about 'natural resources' and about how we're overpopulated all the time, but don't often want to go into real specifics. My guess is the repressed desire for death and depopulation came first, and the narrative later.

English-speaking culture is steeped in Christianity (even modern 'wokeism' is just another, more radical iteration of calvinism), and Christianity is a doomsday cult; we're fascinated by doomsday narratives, the end of the world, mass death- we're in love with these stories; look at zombie movies etc. The overpopulation meme is certainly going to be partially fed by how appealing 'the end of days' is to the western mind.

(Right wingers have a doomsday narrative, too, it's just a biosocial one rather than an ecological/geographic one; modern technology and the resulting societal shifts lead to selection against intelligence, and societal decay propagates irreversibly, leading to a future of stupid, lazy, and most importantly small-souled bugmen.)

Re: I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...eh, it's the fries , trust me ;)

That's indeed the number 1 suspect! All that reused oil everyone is ingurgitating at least once a week XD

Do you know what kinds of oil are commonly used for the frying?
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