4 ms·

I know essentially nothing about this topic, but it seems likely that some particles are more dangerous than others (though I've seen no suggestion of that). I

I know essentially nothing about this topic, but it seems likely that some particles are more dangerous than others (though I've seen no suggestion of that). I'd prefer to go after the elephants in the room before the hamsters. There are MULTITUDES of particles in circulation everywhere everyday. If the impact of only some these are especially dire, we should be able to triage each particle simply by: 1) looking at who suffers most from 'lung cancer of unknown etiology' and what environmental particles they were exposed to, and to a lesser extent, 2) looking at who is exposed to each type of particle and whether they suffer from it. It'd be nice if we had some clear hypotheses in mind before charging off in all directions.

dec0dedab0de 4y ago
One thing that shocked me about cancer treatment is how little they asked me about environmental factors. I assumed there would be questionnaires asking about all kinds of specific products and foods, maybe even asking for soil and water samples from my home. But there was none of that, and this was a major research hospital. The only thing was that they asked permission to use my biopsy for additional research. I know the data would be messy, and if released to the wild it could lead to sensational news stories that affect the sock market, but surely there is some value in collecting up all this data? How long did it take for glyphosate to be linked to cancer? How much sooner could it have been caught?
- ashtonbaker 4y ago
  There is the NHANES dataset, which has a ton of blood/urine test data for various environmental contaminants, along with tons of other data columns like cancer diagnoses, age of onset, etc.