Monday, February 8, 2010

Causes of Cancer

Here I want to talk about some known and common causes of cancer. Common causes of cancer are carcinogens, which are those things in our world that cause cancer. They are divided into three groups: physical, chemical and biological agents. In 1755, we probably had the first connection between cancer and an environmental agent. Percivall Pott, a pathologist in England, noticed that there was a prevalence of scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps. These were boys who worn an outfit, were tight to a rope and lowered down to a chimney, where they swept all the coal tar. These boys got these skin cancers on their scrotum. It was, according to Pott (and it turned out to be true), the constant contact of the coal tar against the scrotum skin. The interesting thing was that the French didn’t get this, because they washed their clothes every day. The English boys didn’t, so they had constant coal tar residues.

Four years later, John Hill noticed the association of cancers of the nose and the oral cavity in patients who chewed tobacco. He just made the connection; he didn’t know why that happened. Then, in 1950 there were two sets of investigators who ended a very long debate, noting the relationship between cigarette smoking and cancer.

This is the history of how we found environmental agents in the causes of cancer. There are three big groups of environmental carcinogens: chemical, physical and biological. Most carcinogens only produce cancer in a very small number of patients. Most of the time, our body’s defenses would prevent cancer from occurring. So, the connection between an environmental factor and a type of cancer is very difficult to establish. Most smokers never get cancer, for example, even though cigarette smoking is still one of our most common causes of death.

Tobacco is the most important of the causes of cancer. It causes 30% of cancer deaths (of all cancers combined). Everything else pales in comparison to this. If we got everybody to quit smoking, then we would have 2000 deaths a year from lung cancer instead of 200000 a year. The money spent on research and prevention could be spent in something else also.

Alcohol is also linked to cancer. When it is combined with tobacco, it is very potent in causing cancers of the mouth. How often do you see someone holding a drink who is also smoking?

Food additives are a small percentage of the causes of cancer. Food flavorings are one example. Certainly saccharine causes cancer in mice. The link in humans is still a little fuzzy.

Industrial chemicals: there are some industrial chemicals that are huge causes of cancer not only for the workers, but for people in the general population also.

Asbestos are microfibers that probably spear the cytoplasm and the nucleus of the cell. They probably also mix chemicals that never should had been mixed. They cause mesothelioma, a kind of cancer. There is an interesting controversy with asbestos. Asbestos in the ground doesn’t really hurt anybody. Miners have a problem, however. Asbestos in walls that are well sealed are less harmful than when you try to remove them, because that’s when you spread it to the workers. Leaving the asbestos where it is would probably do the most in preventing this kind of cancer.

Ionizing radiation: it is the kind of radiation which has a lot of energy and can move electrons in an atom. This could cause mutations in DNA molecules.

Electromagnetic fields: they are usually on the papers, but there is no hard evidence there had been cancer increases because of them. This is still very controversial.

Nuclear Energy: this is one that comes up a lot because of the fact that radiation is emitted. As far as we know, however, the industry of nuclear energy is pretty clean. There have not been increases in cancer deaths, except in places like Chernobyl. We did learn about cancer from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We learned, unfortunately, how much radiation you need to get cancer.

Ultraviolet Radiation: we know that both types A and B of ultraviolet radiation are carcinogenic (skin cancer).

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1 Comment:

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