On a ride back to the hotel this week I was discussing the experience that industry gives to us, a popular discussion, with Wayne. I have also spent the week encouraging, in my own way, Andy who is giving up smoking and yes I’ve discovered a link.
When I started in industry it was accepted practice to clean your hands in solvent baths, the stuff was excellent and would clean anything, that was until they found out it was carcinogenic. We used a gearbox grease ‘crater’ that was as thick as tarmac and the only way you could clean it was in huge heated solvent tanks, the same tanks would clean a lot of jobs from home, breathing gear? Hell no, still in use? Oh no you guessed its carcinogenic. The spray cleaners we used, the thinners, fumes from cutting and welding materials, dressing friction linings and even painting has changed dramatically because of health risks.
The annoying thing is that you can spot carcinogens easily using this simple test: if it works and works well its a carcinogen, if its useless and does half a job then it won’t hurt you. It realy is as simple as that and the test works in all areas of life,take eating: burgers are great so will give you heart disease bad, salads are boring so won’t hurt you, see its easy!
Where is all this going? Well we didn’t invent cancer its always been there, why have we gradually discovered things that give you cancer that didn’t seem to before? Think about it, how many families have a grandparent that smoked and drunk all his life or worked in the mines? They were ok so why aren’t we now? Are we somehow weaker and less able to fend off the demon of cancer? Of course not, the answer is that we are living longer and in doing so we are allowing more time for these things to develop.
When we beat cancer we will live longer and then we will discover that eating vegetables and quorn* results in a horribly painful death. You see it always has done but it takes 110 years to develop so until we beat cancer we won’t live long enough to realise. Be careful my healthy eating freinds a fried breakfast may be the only antidote to all of those tuna salads, don’t leave it too late!
* Other strange chemically bred fungus is available
