Hacker News Reader

Comment by Gatsky | Hacker News Reader

Is this even worth doing when people are still smoking, drinking alcohol, living in polluted areas and eating red meat? These are all known risk factors with large effects on cancer risk in younger people.

I think the effort is better spent as follows:

- ban sale of combustible tobacco products

- ban advertising of alcoholic beverages

View on HN

> still smoking, drinking alcohol, living in polluted areas and eating red meat

One of these is not like the others. I can decide to not smoke, not drink alcohol and not eat red meat. It is a personal choice, and my choice doesn’t affect the health outcomes of those around me. (Mostly. Second hand smoke is a thing, but we did a lot society wise to act against that.)

On the other hand living in poluted areas is absolutely an economy thing. People don’t live in polluted places because they love the sweet buzz it gives them. They live there because by far and large that is the place they can afford to live at. And these areas are not polluted because god made them so. They are mostly polluted because industry or transportation polluted them.

In other words rich people polluting poor people. (By and large.)

I find it very interesting that you choose to ignore the one cause people can’t do anything on their own, and choose to formulate policy proposals against the ones they can.

In fact, all these things have socioeconomic determinants.

Air pollution has a relatively small effect compared to the others.

Smoking and alcohol are unfortunately too convenient as coping mechanisms go. A stimulant-anxiolytic to keep you going through a shift, and a sedative to slow down and stay numb. And they (nicotine especially) feel just too effective—at the start before you build up dependence at least.

Lifestyle modification can only go so far when the stress of living remains high. Swap the burnt stuff with something that puts less tar in your lungs, maybe, but any further is… sigh.

Air pollution is in fact a big impact to shorter lifespans and many health issues.

There's also a post on HN yesterday about research into air pollution from pm2.5 particles triggering cancer.

Well people can certainly move to some extent. Nobody with functional brain considers metropoles to be healthy place to live. People stay there mostly for the money, I know I do and I accept the risks (and working on improving the situation).

Moving to mountainous/overall remote regions is relatively cheap. But people like easy life, close work, shopping, services and so on.

World is certainly not as binary as you paint it

Most people don't even think about the impact where they live has in their health

has smoking, drinking, and eating red meat gone up in the past several decades? because, according to the first sentence of the abstract early onset cancers have gone up in the past several decades.

PFOS in the environment has gone up in the past several decades.

As have Amylase Trypsin Inhibitors

https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/html/10.10...

I think his point by was that instead of chasing the cause of the recent uptick, it would be better to focus on the known causes

In a practical sense, if you do not track something, you have no way of knowing whether it has an impact and whether it outweighs currently known carcinogens. And why immediately go after something people actually willingly put in their bodies as opposed to something that ends up there... somehow?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com