Oy vey. Statistician/statistical geneticist here. The second article is too harsh on the first. The point is subtle and hard to express: carcinogens set the odds, but importance of the part of the risk due to "biological luck," the part that comes from the mutation chain, means whether you individually are affected is random in a way that makes it hard to bother protecting yourself.

Let's say (arbitrary numbers) having poisonium in the food supply increases the lifetime population rate of cancer of the thingamajig from 0.11% to 0.12%. In the US, banning poisonium will save 300 million * (0.12%-0.11%) = 30,000 people, very predictable and important. However, if you personally go on a poisonium-free diet, you decrease your personal risk by 0.01%. You chances go from about 1 in 1000 to about 1 in 1000... so maybe if it involves any effort, you should spend your time doing something else to improve your health.

It's different if the carcinogens targeted specific vulnerable groups. If there was one gene that makes you instantly get cancer at the first whiff of poisonium, we would screen everyone for that gene. The difference between the 0.12 and 0.11 would be due that gene. Everyone with that gene would be put on poisonium-free diets. Everyone else can eat all the poisonium they want, and would still have 0.11 risk. (This is more or less the situation with the active ingredient in aspartame sweetener, though the disease is not cancer)

I don't like the use of the word "luck" in these descriptions, since both genetic and mutation chain randomness are a kind of luck. Also, the studies give quality numbers across many cancers, but the basic concept has been a mainstream model of cancer risk for a long time.