The Sierra Club mulls the question, “Why are so many people getting cancer?” And then, without evidence, answers itself (like homeless guy on the corner), “One reason may be the legal release of millions of pounds of cancer-causing chemicals into our air and waterways.”
Similarly, Rachel Carson asserted that “more American school children die of cancer than from any other disease.” What she said was technically true. However there was not an increase in childhood cancer; there was a decrease in other childhood diseases. In the era Carson was writing people were, at last, spending twice as much on medicines than on funerals. A welcome change from fifty years before when the numbers were the reverse (in 1910, childhood mortality was around 1 in 5; by 1960 it was 1 in 33. and today it is around 1 in 140. In the same way, Rachel Carson used a statistical sleight of hand to show a greater percentage of children, I can say an American male’s lifetime risk of developing cancer is 1 in 2 and 1 in 3 for an American female. It’s true but it’s not the whole story.
The real reasons for the cancer “increase” are more prosaic: medical screening can detect cancer much earlier and people are living long enough to develop cancers because they aren’t dying earlier from other causes. The Mayo Clinic says, “Cancer is caused by changes (mutations) to the DNA within cells. The DNA inside a cell is packaged into a large number of individual genes, each of which contains a set of instructions telling the cell what functions to perform, as well as how to grow and divide. Errors in the instructions can cause the cell to stop its normal function and may allow a cell to become cancerous.”
Because the United States, and the world, has more people, it may appear that more people than ever have cancer. This, in fact, may be true; however, as Ronald Bailey reports, “The cancer death rate has dropped by 23 percent since 1991, translating to more than 1.7 million deaths averted through 2012, according the latest Cancer Statistics 2016 report from the American Cancer Society (ACS).”
Let’s get back to the homeless guy on the corner, I mean, the Sierra Club and its question, “Why are so many people getting cancer?” The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) throws cold river water on their answer (the muttering homeless guy did need a bath). The AICR in its 2001 report said, “Exposure to all manufactured chemicals in air, water, soil and food is believed to cause less than 1% of all cancers.”
The overall cancer death rate rose during most of the 20th century, largely driven by rapid increases in lung cancer deaths among men as a consequence of the tobacco epidemic. Steady reductions in smoking, as well as advances in cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment, have resulted in a 23% drop in the cancer death rate, from a peak of 215.1 (per 100,000 population) in 1991 to 166.4 in 2012.
You can take the American Cancer Society’s word about cancer or you can go to the crazy guy on the corner. He always has something to say.
Nullius in Verba 
I don’t know much about this subject and will just start from this statement “Exposure to all manufactured chemicals in air, water, soil and food is believed to cause less than 1% of all cancers.” that you attribute to the American Cancer Society. The little I do know about cancer from various friends and family who died from it and a few who recovered, is that doctors don’t know what causes it. So, one question when reading your article that came to mind was if manufactured chemicals are less than 1%, what is the rest of breakdown? If, as I expect (but don’t know) something like 50% of cancer comes from unknown causes, then while we “don’t know what we don’t know” since we do know that chemicals like the ones in tobacco cause cancer and other chemicals are known to cause cancer that it is not that big of a stretch to link increased use of manufactured chemicals to the unknown causes of cancer. I am not saying this is right – just that the way the human mind works to look for connections, it is not a big stretch to arrive at that conclusion. I get you are trying to counter that logic leap but surely you understand why people would be suspicious of synthetic chemicals that never existed in the past could be causing health issues for people. And, to only look at cancer leaves out the other host of issues that manufactured chemicals can cause and are known to cause like lung disease, liver disease, Parkinsons, kidney failure, etc.
Your article tried to deal with a subset (cancer) which is fine and to include everything I brought up would be a book, but, to not even mention that, of course, there are plenty of other health issues that are known to be attributable to manufactured chemicals seems misleading in this case.
Here is a link in the post to the ACS report. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21332/full)
You note, “And, to only look at cancer leaves out the other host of issues that manufactured chemicals can cause and are known to cause like lung disease, liver disease, Parkinsons, kidney failure, etc.”
Fair points, Mike. Do you have articles (peer reviewed, preferred) on some of these?
I focused on cancer because that’s what is often pointed to as being at epidemic proportions.
Risk Factors
Mayo Clinic says,
Which is why age is a big risk factor. The more damage and repair that happens, the more likelihood of an error in DNA transcription. Also, as we age, our cells senesce and begin “secreting inflammatory substances that harm neighboring cells and contribute to many age-related diseases, including atherosclerorsis and diabetes.” (http://reason.com/archives/2017/03/31/is-the-cure-for-aging-just-around-the-co)
A NY Times article notes: “Maybe someday some of us will live to be 200. But barring an elixir for immortality, a body will come to a point where it has outwitted every peril life has thrown at it. And for each added year, more mutations will have accumulated. If the heart holds out, then waiting at the end will be cancer.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/sunday-review/why-everyone-seems-to-have-cancer.html)
Cheery, huh?
For more cheeriness on cancer, there’s The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee