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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Your cells make new copies of themselves all the time, generally this goes just fine and your cell makes an identical copy of itself. But sometimes this goes wrong and there’s something wrong with the new cell, when this happens your immune system attacks the mutated cell and kills it. But sometimes it doesn’t, and the mutated cell starts making more mutated copies of itself, a *lot* more mutated copies of itself, way way more copies than a healthy cell would make. This is cancer. DNA is the instructions that tell your cells how to make copies of themselves, anything that damages your DNA makes it more likely that your cells will make mutated copies and the more mutated copies you have the more likely one is to slip past your immune system’s notice and start replicating out of control. Some chemicals like dioxin (the main ingredient in Agent Orange that the US used in Vietnam to kill plants) or things like radiation (even radiation from the sun!) damage your DNA and thus make you more likely to get cancer.
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