Cancer is not just bad luck

â— Although chemicals have improved quality of life over more than a century, few have been adequately tested to determine whether they pose health risks to humans.

â— More than 80,000 industrial chemicals are registered for commercial use with the USEPA and more are used in cosmetics, food additives, pharmaceuticals and pesticides.

â— Many home furnishings are now made of synthetics and petroleum products, and we are further treated with chemical flame retardants, water repellents and agents that have estrogenic activity.

â— The USEPA has required extensive testing of fewer than 200 chemicals, leaving manufacturers to determine any possible risk of the rest.

â— Further study will likely reveal that many are persistent, bio-accumulative and/or toxic.

In the decade since this article was published the number of toxins we're exposed to continues to grow with no apparent concern for their effect on our health. People have been protesting about this for over a decade, but the response from governments, worldwide, has been nought. Should we be worried?

A study published in the journal Nature in December 2015 reported that up to 90% of breast cancers are triggered by environmental factors, challenging the claim that most cancers are down to 'bad luck'. Researchers at Stony Brook University in New York established that intrinsic factors (those that result in mutations due to random errors in DNA replication) - referred to 'bad luck' - contribute only modestly (10 to 30%) to cancer development.

Important research-based knowledge into cancer causation, like that described above, is not shared with patients. Interestingly, in the veterinary world, research into the toxicology of cancer-positive animals has always displayed high concentrations of toxic compounds. Surprise, surprise!

With this latest knowledge now available to us, it is inexplicable there is still no toxicology being performed on those human subjects diagnosed with cancer. There is no public health policy requiring toxicology to be performed, even on the resected tumour. According to the Australian Royal College of Pathologists, this diseased tissue is only assessed for 'clear margins' (the edge or border of the tissue removed in cancer surgery) and cancer type. That's it! Nothing else! And then the tissue is binned. To further add to what must be seen as an abdication of professional responsibility, there are not any surveys undertaken on lifestyle, occupation, diet or other potential sources of toxin.

Without this basic information, how can governments or the medical profession even start to develop an adequate response to the increasing number of cancer diagnoses?

The tumour, the patient's body, history and lifestyle, all hold the clues to the cause of the cancer, but they're ignored. Combined, they present an open book – call it "Answers to the causes of cancer" - waiting to be read but, it seems, no one is reading it.

Consider this: it has already been accepted that primary human lung cancer is caused by chronic inhalation of toxic substances, such as cigarette smoke and asbestos particles. Veterinarians have also shown this to be true in dogs whose owners smoke cigarettes, and where house renovations involving asbestos have been carried out. How is it that lung cancer definitively has a toxic cause, but all the other cancers are down to 'bad luck'?