eli5: Why does it seem like everything is carcinogenic and does that mean if it is, it causes cancer?

Question

I feel like I am always hearing about how things are carcinogenic, like red meat or air conditioners or aspartame. Why does it seem like *so* many things are carcinogenic and does that mean they cause cancer? Because it’s starting to feel like everything causes cancer…

This is the type of thing that gets my anxiety going so I’d love if someone who understands this better than I do can explain it.

In: 354

Answer 1

Your body is made up of a lot of cells, and your body is constantly replacing them by making new ones. Now imagine a dice, every time your body makes a new cell, the dice gets rolled, and if the wrong number comes up, the cell that’s made is wrong, possibly being a cancer cell. Thankfully, the dice isn’t a d6, closer to like a d10000, and even if one cell does occasionally turn out bad, your body is pretty good at getting rid of them before they’re a problem. Still, every once in a while one will pop up, make more cells like it faster than your body gets rid of them and then become cancer.

Now, when something is a carcinogen, that means that it’s coating a few extra sides of that dice to be the wrong number, so it’s more likely to come up and become a bad cell. However, there’s a big difference between something that’ll coat a few extra spaces on that dice and something that’ll coat half the dice.

So, a lot of things are carcinogenic, but some just increase the risk you’ll get cancer by a little, some by a lot, but they’re both increasing the risk so it gets talked about the same sometimes.