Does that mean that 90 percent of cancers are caused by lifestyle and toxics in the environment?
Steingraber: Yes, but distinguishing between the two is where the real argument begins. We know for a fact that 90 to 95 percent of those of us who contract cancer are born with a perfectly healthy set of genes to which something bad happens during our lifetimes. Any one cancer might be caused both by mutations from lifestyle and by mutations from the environment. And you cannot always untwist these two variables from each other — they are not independent of each other. Consider high-fat diet, which has been implicated as a classic lifestyle risk factor in several big-ticket malignancies. Why is high-fat diet associated with several cancers? Of all the foodstuffs, animal fat is the substance in our diet that is the most heavily contaminated with dioxins as well as very persistent pesticides that bioaccumulate as you move up the food chain. The fatty portion of the meat, milk or eggs is what is carrying the huge load. So, on the one hand, fat is a lifestyle choice, but on the other han
