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by leemailll 672 days ago
Why Poland is high?

Also I suspect most of the countries on the map with low rates are not low with cancer rates but worse public health system. So not very telling

6 comments

Good question about Poland. Would be interesting to see stats on various types of cancers there to get an idea why it's so high.

Edit: I found a paper: https://journals.viamedica.pl/nowotwory_journal_of_oncology/...

> Also I suspect most of the countries on the map with low rates are not low with cancer rates but worse public health system. So not very telling

For southern countries, obviously. But the discrepancy between Western Europe (+ Australia and New Zealand) and US+Canada is quite intriguing to say the least.

I can imagine countries with poor healthcare and low life expectancy genuinely have less cancer incidence, because people die before they reach prime cancer age.
People go to Poland to get cheap private healthcare, but normally that is for things like plastic surgery so not sure if it would affect it.
We have high environmental pollution in both air and water. Also high rates of alcohol consumption and smoking. And poor food quality.
There's a timeline in that chart, and the rate for Poland suddenly goes up in 2008. That's clearly an artifact.