Every time I see someone touch oil or breathe in fumes or dust( or other dirty things), I always see “hes gonna get cancer” in comments. I always kind of just accepted it as truth, but do they actually give you cancer? like how can breathing in some dust make your cells divide weirdly and give you cancer?
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In very simple terms, Think of getting cancer as rolling snake eyes on a pair of dice. Each time something causes damage to your DNA, you roll the dice. Most of the time, you probably won’t role double ones, and your DNA can repair it self with no issues. sometimes, due to completely random chance, your DNA repairs incorrectly which causes the “directions” for cell growth to go bad and the cells start replicating when they aren’t supposed to.
When people say something causes cancer, it most scenarios it doesn’t “cause” cancer, it just damages your DNA thus forcing you to roll the dice again. (The one exception off the top of my head is virus forcing specific mutations that cause cancer). Smoking for example causes lots of damage to your lungs and forces you to roll those dice a lot more than a non smoker. But it’s all random chance, it’s why you have kids that have never smoked before getting cancer, and people who smoke a pack a day for decades not get cancer. Just because you are rolling dice a lot, doesn’t mean you will ever roll snake eyes, and conversely, you can only roll the dice once and get snake eyes on your one roll.
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