If someone were to develop cancer due to a toxin in drinking water, what kind of cancer would it be?

Question

Technical, scientific answers only please. No guesses. The reason I ask is because I knew a family who had 4 out of 6 members end up with cancer with two of them dying from it over a period of 30 years. They each lived in the house for various periods due to the fact that one of them was a child of the family who grew up and got cancer later in life. Both of the original couple got it with the husband dying from it. The second husband got it and the original wife eventually died from it. They all had various types of cancers.

Also I live in a state where cancer is prevalent, but certainly not that prevalent to happen to that many members of a family.

They drank well water.

Answer 1

The honest and scientific answer to this is that it would depend on the type of carcinogen that was present in the water what type of cancer they might get.

Answer 2

I believe that is not only possible but highly likely. They are now admitting that rural women. Those connected to farm life are highly prone to breast cancer. Just recently they admitted the link to chemical use on the farms. One widely used when I was young was DDT. Used to control insects. They sprayed barns, milk cows & homes with this stuff. YRs later the levels found in breast milk of mothers who would have been children then was unbelieavable, The incidence of kidney & bladder cancer & laukima I believed could well be linked to well water laced with pesticides & herbicides. Wells tested in rural areas have often showed high levels of these.

Answer 3

If you have municipal drinking water, the chemical chlorine is a major suspect in the developement of prostate cancer.

Well water, I would look for chemical pesticides used in farming.

Answer 4

Fluoride In Water Linked To Rare Kind Of Cancer
Another good article about fluoride danger. The Harvard researchers have linked it to rare bone cancer. Dr. Elise Bassin wrote that boys who drink water with levels of fluoride considered safe by federal guidelines are five times more likely to develop osteosarcoma – rare cancer - than boys who drink unfluoridated water. I think there is so much controversy about fluoride that it is time that we somehow remove it from our environment, toothpaste, water etc. Still all the major tooth paste factories are using fluoride in their products. Read the article:



Young boys who drink fluoridated tap water are at greater risk for a rare bone cancer, Harvard researchers reported yesterday.

The study, published online yesterday in a Harvard-affiliated journal, could intensify debate over fluoridation and mean more scrutiny for Harvard’s Dr. Chester Douglass, accused of fudging the findings to downplay a cancer link.

“It’s the best piece of work ever linking fluoride in tap water and bone cancer. It’s pretty damning for (Douglass),” said Richard Wiles of the Environmental Working Group, which filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health against Douglass.

Douglass, an epidemiology professor at Harvard’s School of Dental Medicine, is paid as editor of the Colgate Oral Care Report, a newsletter supported by the toothpaste maker.

Harvard and the NIH are investigating whether Douglass misrepresented research findings last year when he said there was no link, despite extensive research to the contrary by one of his doctoral students. The NIH gave Douglass at least $1 million for the research.

That student, Dr. Elise Bassin, wrote in yesterday’s Cancer Causes and Control that boys who drink water with levels of fluoride considered safe by federal guidelines are five times more likely to develop osteosarcoma than boys who drink unfluoridated water. About 250 U.S. boys each year are diagnosed with osteosarcoma, the most common type of bone cancer and the sixth most common cancer in children. Bassin notes that more research is needed to “confirm or refute this observation.”

Douglass, in a letter to the editor published in the same issue, said Bassin’s study was a “partial view of this ongoing study,” and urged readers to be “especially cautious” when interpreting the findings.

Source: Boston Herald