“*A carcinogen is a substance, organism or agent capable of causing cancer*”.
“*Cancer* is *a disease in which some of the body’s cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body*”.
How does something like alcohol or tobacco cause cancer?
In: Biology
Simply put, anything that can damage a cell can cause cancer. That covers everything from certain chemicals to spiky rock fibers (asbestos) and radiation.
Your cells constantly divide and die off, and both functionalities are in the cell’s DNA. Cancer happens when
1) The part of the DNA responsible for controlling the division breaks,
2) The part of the DNA responsible for making the cell kill itself breaks, and
3) The cell gets the signal to start dividing.
End result is a clump of cells that keeps on growing uncontrollably, i.e. cancer.
If you’re smoking, for example, you’re inhaling smoke which has a lot of harmful substances in it which get in your lungs and damage the tissue there. Your body is good at repairing itself and killing off any cells that look suspicious, but the more damage you cause with the smoke, the more likely is that you lose those three (simplified) dice rolls and end up with a tumor in your lungs.
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