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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit of a surprise given how the prevalence of smoking and drinking in the younger generations is steadily declining. We also have a lot more effort put into reducing emissions from all industries. The idea that kids of the 70's chain smoking in the smog have lower cancer risk than the teetotaling youth of today is just sad.

The article touched on it a bit, but apparently obesity is a huge contributing factor and is one major area where today's children are far worse off than their historical peers.

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Or its the chemistry.

Every few years some new plastic/common nonstick pan coating/other common substance that you've definitely ingested repeated gets pulled from the market because it causes cancer, and it turns out that the giant chemical company producing it knew for 25 years and covered it up.

I took all the plastic out of my kitchen.

Cast iron or stainless steel pots and pans. No coatings. Seasoned cast iron is as non-stick as any flourocarbon coating.

Glass or ceramic drinking glasses, serving and prep dishes and bowls. Wood or metal utensils and wood cutting boards.

You can only do so much though, almost all of our food is processed and prepared with plastic equipment and packaging somewhere in the supply chain.

but isn't the seasoning on cast irons pans basically burned fats and oils? and as such also considered cancerogenous?

Yeah probably. But no flourine, I'd guess.

Even canned goods have a plastic liner these days.

Stress can cause cancer too and it’s possible stress went up for young people.

We can safely say that other second order markers of stress have gone up. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/cdc-data-shows-u-s-teen-...

If you put social media in the equation, I could argue that it’s certain that stress went up for young people.

Not being snarky, but that would be a crazy headline: "Social media causes cancer".

> Not being snarky, but that would be a crazy headline: "Social media causes cancer".

HN is social media, so reading "HN causes cancer" wouldn't be bad either.

"HN is social media, ..."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2647377

"4) Social media services facilitate the development of social networks online by connecting a profile with those of other individuals and/or groups."

Where are the HN "groups". How does an HN user "connect a profile with those of other invidiuals and/or groups."

"Social media" generally requires users to "log in" and create profiles in order to view the website contents.

By contrast, any web user can read HN without creating a profile and without logging in.

The majority of HN content is not user-generated, e.g., photos and videos created by HN users, it is content from other websites, e.g., news organisations, shared via URL.

Most HN users do not comment or submit. No user-generated content.

Even in the case of "Show HN", the content is almost always hosted by some other website.

"Social media" today is websites with pages that contain advertising purchased by third parties. Where is this advertising on HN.

Please read the paper you've linked, because it's able to do much better job at telling you that HN is in fact social media than I ever could.

The paper lists examples of "social media" websites. HN, which dates back to 2007, is not among them.

or the ability to deal with stress declined

I don't see a reason why the ability to deal with stress declined.

> This is a bit of a surprise given how the prevalence of smoking and drinking in the younger generations is steadily declining.

Yes, I'm shocked that cancer (17 types) in young people is increasing as niche causes like smoking (lung) and drinking (liver, esophageal) is declining. I wonder what's happening to the #1 cause of cancer (all)?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-child-17-18/obe...

Oh. Well, there it is.

> apparently obesity is a huge contributing factor

"Apparently". Ding ding ding.

If you're fat post-adolescence, put down the fork.

If you're fat because your parents/caregivers let you get that way and it's difficult to change, you're unarguably the victim of child abuse and you should cut those monsters out of your life and seek help to change the habits they instilled in you. It will be difficult, but it's possible. Look into GLP-1 agonists for a kickstart.

lung cancer rates have sharply declined at least https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/lungb.html

lung cancer in young people who are non smokers is going up though

I wonder of vaping falls in the category of non-smoking. It really should have it's own category now I suppose.

medically no, i believe vaping counts as smoking

If a patient is asked do they smoke, and they vape but don't smoke, I'm thinking that most will answer that they do not smoke.

Heres a thought: Data wise, lumping vaping with smoking is a favor to vaping manufacturers who resist stricter regulations. It lets them hide behind an argument that its safer while not showing what the actual risk is vs not doing it at all.

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