Historically, the population of the world was exposed to much higher doses of common pollutants than today in much of the world. One example, see link below. If

Historically, the population of the world was exposed to much higher doses of common pollutants than today in much of the world. One example, see link below. If what your second line describes were so directly the case, then, for example, the people of late medieval Europe or the time of the early industrial revolution would have been saturated with diseases like cancer, alzheimers, diabetes etc. Maybe they were, since medical records from those times are barely above non-existent, never mind being clinically accurate, but the evidence either way definitely shows how much higher accumulations of common toxins were in people's bones, hair, blood etc prior to modern times. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00204-012-0866-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00204-012-0866-7