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.
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As others have said, basically *everything* is carcinogenic in some way. Every second you spend in the sun is a second that your skin is getting flooded with UV radiation, and every second represents a tiny incremental risk that one of those photons is going to be “the one” that hits the right spot in the right DNA of the right cell to cause it to glitch and start dividing uncontrollably.
A lot of people have trouble with gauging risk, and if they hear that you have “5x the risk of melanoma”, that sounds awful but it might just mean an increase from 0.00005%/day to 0.00025%/day. You might have a very different idea of how important that is to you if you only hear the “5x” or you only hear the “0.00025%”.
A lot of the “this is known to be carcinogenic” labeling stuff comes from California law, which requires labeling for things that are “known to the state of California” to be carcinogenic. It’s a long list. The problem with the law is that companies get penalized really hard if something on that list is in their product and they don’t label it, *regardless of whether they knew it was in there or not*. So companies just put the label on basically everything, even if there’s nothing on the list actually in their product, because everybody knows it doesn’t mean anything, and there’s no penalty for over-labeling. So don’t stress about the labels!
For anxiety, here are a few things to consider:
1. Therapy! Professional therapists are specifically trained to deal with exactly this kind of thing and can give you some tools and coping strategies (and if needed, medication!) to help you work through some of this. People do this all the time and it’s easy enough to start with one visit to see what they can do for you without committing yourself.
2. Education! Watch some YouTube videos about chemistry, how cancer works. When you encounter a chemical that someone told you is dangerous, do some research into it. Understand how to read statistics and probabilities and what different concentrations mean, and then try and work out what your *real* risk is.
3. Wear sunscreen!
4. See your doctor once a year, and get screened for the things they think you should get screened for (and don’t push to get screened for the things they don’t).
4. If you find yourself getting exposed to stuff like this through social media, like Instagram or TikTok, keep in mind that the algorithms try hard to feed you the content that it knows that you keep pausing on and engaging with. If you’re doing this about things that you’re anxious about, this is just going to make your anxiety worse. Whenever you feel like you’re having negative thoughts about stuff you’re seeing on social media, take advantage of the platform’s “dislike” or “stop showing me things like this” options so that you can train the algorithms to keep you away from things that don’t make you feel good. This can have a HUGE effect on anxiety and wellbeing.
4. Practice acceptance of your mortality. The simple truth is everyone dies in the end. You have about a [1-in-5 chance it’ll be cancer](https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/understanding-cancer-risk/lifetime-probability-of-developing-or-dying-from-cancer.html). Even if you make yourself impervious to cancer, which you can’t do, then it’ll just be something else. Repeat to yourself in the mirror every morning: my body will eventually fail me. And love it anyway. And use the time you have.
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