Love Canal Was Supposed to Cause Cancer. How Many People Died? - Slate Magazine

Ninety percent of cancer is environmental—we heard that again and again. Some of our fears were rooted in a misunderstanding. Epidemiologists define environment very broadly to include everything that is not the direct result of heredity—smoking, eating, exercise, the bearing of children, sexual habits, any kind of behavior or cultural practice. Viruses, exposure to sunlight, radon, cosmic rays—these are all defined as environmental. There was a chance of a person getting a head start on cancer by inheriting a damaged gene. But most of the mutations that triggered a malignancy were those acquired during life. That was encouraging news for public health and prevention. But it was often misconstrued to mean that almost all cancer was brought on by pollution, pesticides, and industrial waste.