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 addition to others excellent comments about DNA damage, a slight clarification on the “randomness” of carcinogens. It’s not really that random.
There are entire classes of chemicals that are likely to be carcinogenic – for instance, chemicals containing benzene rings. Benzene and its derivatives are extremely chemically active due to the chemical properties of the benzene ring and exposure to benzene can cause damage to bone marrow, resulting in leukemia or other cancers. Other carcinogenic substances cause cancer in different ways, but they tend to fall into classes. Lung irritants, such as asbestos, cause cancer by injuring the villi in the lungs and continuously creating new wounds, which causes lots of cells to get created and creates more opportunities for a cancerous mutation to occur during cell reproduction.
Some carcinogens are complete surprises found during testing, but many of them are similar to other carcinogens in ways that make regulators and testers give them extra scrutiny.
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