Is fatal cancer a mostly modern epidemic?

by caspito

Is the plastic, antibiotic, cell phone tower, radio wave climate of the past 100 years giving us more bad cancer than before?

Junkeregge

No, cancer is actually declining in all age cohorts. That means that today a 60 year old male has a lower risk of developing cancer than, say, thirty years ago.

However, cancer risk depends largely on age. If you are ninety, the risk of developing cancer is much higher than if you are thirty. Average life expectancy has increased a lot over the last decades. Consequently people are on average older now than ever before. This is the real reason why absolute cancer rate has increased.

That doesn't mean that we may not have developed substances that increase the risk of cancer. But it cannot be a big problem for the general population.