6 ms·
> "However, the effects of individual exposures remain largely unknown. To study early-life exposures and their implications for multiple cancer types will requ
by photochemsyn 4y ago
> "However, the effects of individual exposures remain largely unknown. To study early-life exposures and their implications for multiple cancer types will require prospective cohort studies with dedicated biobanking and data collection technologies."
What that means is analytical body-burden data collection should be a medical norm, for a variety of substances: polychlorinated biphenyls, triazine herbicides (atrazine), industrial solvents like trichloroethylene, brominated fire retardants, nitrosoamines, plastic-sourced phthalates, perchlorates, hydrazine, hexavalent chromium and so on.
Collecting such individual data via blood & urine samples (possibly fat biopsies & breast milk as well) on a yearly basis should really be part of a standard medical checkup procedure. That would provide a dataset which could be used to address that question.
This is hardly a new proposal, for example see this 2001 PBS report, in which journalist Bill Moyers got his body burden test results:
https://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/bodyburden.html https://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/bodyburden.html
The results are not unusual. Each of us has some load of industrial chemicals stored in or passing through our bodies. These chemical residues – termed the "chemical body burden" – can be detected in blood, urine and breast milk.
- adamredwoods 4y agoEven Nature stated microplastics are everywhere, yet we do not know what effects it will have. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01143-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01143-3
- BrianOnHN 4y ago> Collecting such individual data via blood & urine samples (possibly fat biopsies & breast milk as well) on a yearly basis should really be part of a standard medical checkup procedure No so long as sickness is so profitable. The incentives aren't there like you would think.
- soperj 4y agoWhat about in every western country where it isn't profitable?
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- lostlogin 4y agoI disagree with the comment you are replying to, but I also disagree with yours too. Healthcare is crazy profitable. Insurance companies, healthcare providers, suppliers etc form a decent chunk of most western economies, the US of A in particular.
- soperj 4y agoI'm specifically not talking about the states, and talking about countries with public health care.
- robocat 4y ago~40% of is spent on “External service providers” out of ~$2B budget by my local public health board. So there is leeway for private profit in public health in my country at least. https://www.cdhb.health.nz/wp-content/uploads/d682178a-canterbury-dhb-annual-plan-2021-22.pdf https://www.cdhb.health.nz/wp-content/uploads/d682178a-cante... See page 79 of PDF or page 71 printed (note about ~50% of budget is for personnel)
- ITI03 4y agoContaminated ground water around military bases from the use of fire extinguishing foams. https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/2020-military-pfas-sites/map/ https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/2020-military-pfas-site...
- metadat 4y agoAlso a lot of contamination due to jet fuel leaks in and around US military bases.
- haldujai 4y agoIt would be nice to have this information to see if any trends are discovered (all of this is theoretical, I question whether measuring excreted compounds rather than stores is is relevant but that’s a separate point) however it is unclear what value this information will provide and seems unlikely it will generate anything actionable. With that in mind, it’s hard to justify the colossal costs that would be involved in administering such a program. Young (< 50) healthy adults shouldn’t even really be getting annual checkups (in my professional opinion and per several guidelines) and annual blood work is definitely not indicated. Annual urinalysis is not indicated as part of the general work up for patients of any age, so this would be adding a whole extra step in specimen collection and not just adding on a test. Healthcare is generally a zero sum game and if we divert $ and lab resources to something like this that means other tests and procedures are not being done. A small prospective study as the authors suggest would be interesting, yet still expensive. It’s a huge stretch to say everyone should be getting this and ignores the harm that this would cause.
- WFHRenaissance 4y ago> Young (< 50) healthy adults shouldn’t even really be getting annual checkups (in my professional opinion and per several guidelines) and annual blood work is definitely not indicated. Tell this to my mom.
- saiya-jin 4y agoI am sorry for whatever happened/happens to your mom. That being said, when looking at cold hard data, this is a valid point. We all have various weird stuff in us, the older the more. Cystes, weird bulges, benign cancers that wont kill us for 50 years. If you are a male say above 40 or 50, you probably have some very early (or not) prostate cancer. Often you need an invasive procedure to get more info. Even then its quite often not 100% clear if surgery is overall safer and better than keeping and monitoring. We like this idea of omnipotent medicine but its a pipe dream. Difficult procedures are extremely expensive regardless of location (US stands apart as always but still a valid point), and even ignoring price there simply isnt enough staff/equipment. Covid and often selfish clueless people certainly didnt help. Medicine tries to fix as much as it can, which is mostly not enough. The hard part is accepting that when it becomes about a close one. There is no easy solution. Source: wife is an emergency/gp doctor, went through this countless times. And much worse, even smart people become completely irrational, cruel or selfish very easily in such situations.
- Gatsky 4y agoIs this even worth doing when people are still smoking, drinking alcohol, living in polluted areas and eating red meat? These are all known risk factors with large effects on cancer risk in younger people. I think the effort is better spent as follows: - ban sale of combustible tobacco products - ban advertising of alcoholic beverages
- pasquinelli 4y agohas smoking, drinking, and eating red meat gone up in the past several decades? because, according to the first sentence of the abstract early onset cancers have gone up in the past several decades.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoPFOS in the environment has gone up in the past several decades.
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoAs have Amylase Trypsin Inhibitors https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/html/10.1055/s-0037-1604840 https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/html/10.10...
- shusaku 4y agoI think his point by was that instead of chasing the cause of the recent uptick, it would be better to focus on the known causes
- krisoft 4y ago> still smoking, drinking alcohol, living in polluted areas and eating red meat One of these is not like the others. I can decide to not smoke, not drink alcohol and not eat red meat. It is a personal choice, and my choice doesn’t affect the health outcomes of those around me. (Mostly. Second hand smoke is a thing, but we did a lot society wise to act against that.) On the other hand living in poluted areas is absolutely an economy thing. People don’t live in polluted places because they love the sweet buzz it gives them. They live there because by far and large that is the place they can afford to live at. And these areas are not polluted because god made them so. They are mostly polluted because industry or transportation polluted them. In other words rich people polluting poor people. (By and large.) I find it very interesting that you choose to ignore the one cause people can’t do anything on their own, and choose to formulate policy proposals against the ones they can.
- caeril 4y agoDon't hold your breath. One example: Coronary calcium deposit scans are cheap and extremely effective at giving a probabilistic window of possible future heart attack, but doctors don't order them prior to a CVD event, and insurance doesn't cover them as a pre-CVD elective. Instead we're told: We have no way of knowing if or when you'll experience infarction, it's one of God's Great Mysteries. Just don't eat eggs and pray. You're absolutely right, but the entire medical industry has no intention of actually reducing mortality. It's a cash grab from top to bottom, and preventative monitoring of the kind you suggest already has precedent in coronary calcium scanning. It's not going to happen if it reduces the overall predicted revenue per patient. In the same way that a single triple-bypass surgery is far more lucrative than a hundred coronary calcium scans, a full course of cancer treatment is absurdly more profitable than regular tissue carcinogen testing.
- adewinter 4y agoI would take a citation on literally any single one of your statements
- 10u152 4y agoIf they’re cheap and you’re concerned couldn’t you just get one out of pocket ?
- haldujai 4y ago“Just don't eat eggs and pray.” If you avoid smoking, have a healthy diet, get adequate exercise and consequently maintain a healthy weight you’ll do far more to prognosticate your MI risk than a calcium score.
- matheusmoreira 4y agoInvasive biopsies in common medical screening? Yeah, that just isn't gonna happen. Nobody is going to test for any of those chemicals either due to the huge cost and questionable benefit.