Would this make me worry a lot? Not really. I have worse health risks like being overweight, pfas etc.
The "if it was that dangerous we'd see the effect" is a pretty decent argument IMO considering it's been heavily used for almost 40 years.
Also, here in Germany, I can get my aspartame in glass bottles, fortunately.
I mainly drink my sodas from PET bottles by the way because cans cost twice as much per litre over here.
The progress on other fronts really is staggering. Forget pre-industrial times: global child mortality is half of what it was in the 1980s. The same is true for vehicle deaths in the US.
We do have way more cancers, a big reason we know about is our food choices. We don't even know the impact of hard things to measure yet, like the impact of all these things on our gut biology. It's not a new discovery that eating a lot of sugary foods leads to greatly increased diabetes, and now we are learning more about how artificial sugars have their own impact. So basically, it's increasingly obvious that artificial sugar drinks are not good for you too, maybe in different ways than "natural sugars".
That is no way to live.
In general, you should think about risk management, not exclusion. Have your bacon as a bi-monthly treat, and splurge for some high quality bacon at the butcher.
I remember seeing a video of a talk where the host asked who was managing their health by going partially or fully vegetarian. Lots of raised hands. Then he asked who was sitting or standing still for extended amounts of time. Even more raised hands, including almost all of the previous group. And that’s a higher cancer risk than meat eating :)
* Approximately 39.5% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes (based on 2015–2017 data). This is no where near 50% of people "having cancer".
* The rate of new cases of cancer (cancer incidence) is 442.4 per 100,000 men and women per year (based on 2013–2017 cases). (.442%)
* The cancer death rate (cancer mortality) is 158.3 per 100,000 men and women per year (based on 2013–2017 deaths) (.158%).
Regardless, these numbers are very scary.
Live long enough and you will get cancer.
It would be interesting if death rates had a cut-off. Don't tell me that 50% die of heart disease, rather exclude everyone over 70, then tell me percentages.
For most of my life the largest causes of death are accidents and suicide, but equally the age-group either the highest rate are over 75s.
Sure there ways to improve both quantity, and quality, of life. Smoking pretty obviously reduces both - its a good habit to quit, or not start. Chugging DDT is bad for you. But linking foods to longevity, where there is unconvincing evidence, isn't helpful to me.
Especially when that food has significant quality-of-life benefits.
Ultimately we all die of something. A death "saved" here, is a death "gained" there.
Moreover, if you specialize on GI cancers, it looks like you see the opposite of what you'd expect if aspartame was a potent carcinogen: the rates are lower in places where Diet Coke is more prevalent.
Maybe I'm looking at the wrong numbers, but I really think this is a result some people on message boards just want to see.
https://nordcan.iarc.fr/en/dataviz/trends?mode=cancer&multip...
while cancer mortality rate was decreasing since 1980
https://nordcan.iarc.fr/en/dataviz/trends?mode=cancer&multip...
You are using the "I was at the train station and I was never mugged there, therefore mugging never happens at train stations" extrapolated argument.
People still think that smoking doesn't cause cancer, even when they are in the hospital because of not being able to breathe.
People still deny that climate change exists because of that one bought study in the 60s.
People still drink chlorified water and governments still are too lazy to use a biological cleaning process all over the world, even though it is proven that this increases cancer rates 2x as much.
As the devil's advocate I'd argue that people will only change their behaviour if a person within their personal influence radius dies because of it.
If they just read about it, they don't care.
What biological cleaning process are you referring to? How does it prevent bacterial growth in the water distribution system?
</joke>
https://www.starwars.com/news/so-what-the-heck-are-midi-chlo...
You may have caught that, but it was Tomcan who made the "joke" comment. I just read it as they responded to your question, but added the terrible humour to imply that they didn't take it seriously.
The remaining ~4% (the Schlacke) usually are used as fertilizers for farming or are burned in biogas energy plants. The latter happens when the quality is not good enough or the sewege plant doesn't have a stage 4 filtration system.
The German wikipedia entry is actually also pretty good [4]
[1] https://umwelt.provinz.bz.it/wasser/wie-funktioniert-eine-kl...
[2] https://av-selbitztal.de/klaeranlage-naila/funktionsweise
[3] https://industryeurope.com/sectors/energy-utilities/how-germ...
Not adding any chlorine is an interesting choice in any case, you can start out with perfectly pure water and still end up with contamination along the way to your tap. A tiny amount of chlorine prevents that, and it evaporates quickly after the water leaves the tap.
It's more like "1 million people were at the train station and were never mugged there".