Yeah, yeah. It actually does. Even air!

Hey breathers. Trace's here for D-News. Yeah, air. I know. Yeah it sounds stupid.

But according to a new study from Peer J, people who live at elevations closer to sea level have more tumors than people who live where the air is thinner!

Even oxygen gives you cancer?

We need oxygen to breathe, but, in breathing air with more oxygen in it, we may be triggering lung cancer formation.

Imperial County, California is 11 meters below sea level, and San Juan County, Colorado is 3473 meters above sea level, which means the amount of oxygen can vary by as much as 35 percent depending on where you live.

The two researchers behind the study compared the rates of numerous cancers across the United States in counties from purple mountains majesty to the amber waves of grain, and found a 13% increase in lung cancers for every 1000 meters decrease in elevation!

That same increase was not seen in breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers.

Before you freak out and try and you know, hold your breath for the rest of your life, this doesn't mean that oxygen causes cancer at all; just that higher levels of elevation correlate with lower levels of cancer.

In fact, there are a number of other benefits from living at higher elevation, including decreased rates of heart disease, better vitamin D synthesis, and more weight loss just to name a few.

But more research is obviously needed here.

It's a possibility that oxygen is both necessary for Earth life and somehow slowly killing us.

When we breathe in oxygen, our cells use it to harvest energy from food, but part of the byproduct of oxygen are free radicals called reactive oxygen species.

Sure, they're natural, but they're also toxic.

According to research in the Annual Review of Genetics, our own ancient mitochondrial systems might be causing degenerative diseases and/ or cancer, which brings me back to the earlier point.

Does everything cause cancer in this piece?

Breathing causes it, making energy from food causes it, what about the food itself?

My mom would always try to cook her pork chops with the little black crusty bits on the edges, because it was delectable, but she stopped when she found out the charred bits cause cancer.

According to the American Cancer Society, some starchy foods cooked at a high-temperatures will produce acrylamide, a chemical found in paper making, wastewater, adhesives and cigarettes.

Frying bacon, or grilling and smoking meats can expose food to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a chemical known to cause skin, liver, and stomach cancer in lab animals.

Fried foods, they got, they got their own problems.

In the end, no serious science recommends forgoing cooked food, but moderating the amount of grilled and blackened food is gonna decrease your cancer risk overall.

Air, food, and your own body making those two things together into energy can cause cancer.

So relax, and pay attention to what you're eating, but don't give yourself an ulcer over it, because you know, we've obviously got enough problems, am I right?

How does these all make you feel though?

Go down into the comments, let us know what you think, and make sure you subscribe for more D-News!

Thanks for watching everybody.