Poverty as a Risk Factor in Human Cancers

A very comprehensive review has been published in the recent issue of Iranian J Public Health, entitled "Environmental Factors Inducing Human Cancers" by Dr Parsa from The National Institutes of Health, Bethesda (1). The author has discussed the instigating factors of environmental cancer and the way they can seriously disrupt in cellular interactions. He believed that in addition to all of the evidence cited, exposure to the environment is linked to multiple causal factors of various human cancers (1). Furthermore, in addition to the environmental factors that Dr Parsa has identified in his article, poverty is also is among the greatest health risks and a major carcinogen. Dr. Samuel Broder, who was director of the National Cancer Institute, had suggested that “poverty is a carcinogen,” a cancer-causing agent (2).