We eat garbage, carry a phone all day, stare at millions of micro led lights all day
In Australia, two out of three people will get skin cancer at some point in their lives. That's caused by the Sun, an unshielded nuclear reactor bathing us in dangerous radiation strong enough to hurt.
Your food is probably doing less harm than the plasticisers in the container you put it in, especially if you microwave it.
Your phone and LED lights contribute almost precisely zero to cancer incidence. Your guilt over your Tik Tok habit doesn't mean that you're also getting cancer from it. You're wasting your life, sure, but not dying as a consequence.
As others have pointed out, air pollution from cars is doing real damage to us all, far more than the occasional Happy Meal.
And especially tons of modern-life induced stress - which is death by some huge-ass cuts and thousands of small cuts (a different experience to fewer big stressors in the past, like a bad farming season, otherwise combined with a quite lax lifestyle).
Actually there was an article on HN a few days ago which differentiated work-related distress between stress (induced by too much work) and anxiety (induced by too little work).
It's become a nuisance in the background now after many years but each new task usually brings both these 'joys':
1) When I first get "Do/change/add X into the giant ball of mud of application that noone completely understands", I first get anxiety. Literally I have no idea not just how am I going to implement that but if it's at all possible. The definition of "anxiety caused by too little work" still goes, because I'm not "working" (not anything palpable like lines of code that can be measured and PRs be made). I'm just 'thinking', but that isn't much considered in business. Can't charge the customers for 'thinking', you need to produce.
2) Once I get familiar with the complexity involved and have some idea on how things can be solved, it's already too late in the sprint phase, it should have been done already. Now follows stress of delivering on time the 'commitment'. Not to mention that I usually implement half the task before stumbling into new evidence that changes the equation enough to require a different approach or further 'thinking' all while time is running out and commitments are not met.
Task solved, another one pops up, rinse and repeat #1-#2.
Just kidding. (Well, half-joking only). I really don't know...
Essentially you'd be doing the "thinking" by actively coding (at least a minimum solution), instead of thinking about the problem abstractly first. Though I often do it just like you described it, with all the issues you mentioned.
The link between those and cancer is tenuous at best.
Health benefits of exercise are well known. And likely to have some effect on the chances of developing particular types of cancer.
Not to mention indoor air vs. outdoor air, that bowl of snacks within reach while sitting, etc. Various factors that shift towards "healthy" while out for a walk, bicycle ride or whatever.
Our physical health and mental health are both intrinsically linked, and both under attack because it's all very profitable, really.