How do carcinogenic substances cause cancer? What happens in your body?
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The most common way that carcinogenic substances cause cancer is by damaging your DNA. DNA can repair breaks and missing bases, and it needs to because of normal wear and tear, but it makes mistakes. When a substance that’s particularly good at getting into the nucleus of cells (where it shouldn’t be) and breaking the DNA is causing large amounts of damage, it’s much more likely that a mistake is going to be made. If that mistake involves DNA for cell replication, the cell will start growing and dividing uncontrollably – cancer. If the mistake involves cell death, then if that cell starts becoming cancerous naturally, then your body’s first line of defence – getting that cell to self-destruct – won’t work, so cancer is again a lot more likely
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