Actually, chlorine is one of the least causes of cancer - it is NOT a good substance, is highly toxic (has been known to cause asthma) and I once took a company that made it to court but it is not a carcinogen. You could never prove that in court. I had to use sect 33(3) of the federal Fisheries Act to sue the chemical company that tried to cover up a leak of chlorine in my community but that's another story. (Other than my own work as a biochemist and oncologist, I know more about this element than I really care to, :sad
Florida has a higher than usual rate of melanoma for one thing - and that almost seems common sense when you think about it. People who have lived there and been in the sun though that applies to many other jurisdictions as well. Cancer is caused by so many factors and I know this is offtrack but I just wanted to clarify this as a cancer researcher!
There are so many carcinogens we encounter every day - not just the ones we think of either like smoking and second hand smoke, eating well, (preferably organic foods that we know were not treated with pesticides), pollution with organophosphates and digoxin and DDT- which stil is around. Recall the strontium 90 tests that were done in the 50's with baby boomers. They asked moms to send in baby teeth and almost every one of those children- from places in Canada and the contiguous USA had strontium 90- a byproduct of the a bomb tests done around the world in them. So if were were born in the mid 50's to early 60's, we ALL have that whether we want it or not. The jury on electromegnetic fields is out but I rather think it does happen because I once had four children from the same community and they all lived near a sub station! Hardly scientific and noting I would use as research or cite ina journal but it gives one pause.
The lack of chlorine in water is actually worse even though I am no fan of that chemical. I have seen the reports of rural folk who depend on wells and their water is not good and if they lived near areas where spraying was done by govts (whether it was DDT, matacil, organophosphates or 2-4D which with another compound is agent orange). I even had one child with =canbcer who had their well water tested and it was full of what we now cal agent organge. They lived near a pulp and paper company that spayed its woodlots. There was alwas supposed to be a one mile buffer zone but how many pilots observed that and don't forget the wind, sigh! I could go on - the causes are endless, endless- genetic plays a part but it seems to me we spend way too much time blaming the person with cancer (she smoked, she did not eat properly). I treat children, come infants and pls tell me how what they DID. No, it is not chlorine but it IS forms of pollution and our waterways, air and sediment are all way over the accepted govt limit and those limits are usually set too high to start with. And don't forget asll those products (hair dyes for examples) that we use that are not required to list all the ingredients, many of them carcinogens.
I have a colleague who calls what we live in now as world war 3 (This was before Iraq and Afghanistan which are seen as that by some - I am not there yet). She believe world war 3 is the cancer that is killing us all slowly thx mainly to these bomb tests done in the 50's and 60's and all these other pollution problems which need to be resolved. There are days I know I feel like the little dike boy in Holland - putting my finger in the dike to save the water from coming through. (You know that story I assume). We need to be clamping done on polluters. We have come a long way in cancer treatment but certainly NOT in its prevention! Just think about it. We run for the cure for breast cancer but the rates go up , not down - the money foes for treatment and NOT prevention. And yes, I am glad there is a vaccine for cervical cancer but we do not yet know the long term outcomes of that vaccine yet and as someone who had cervical cancer , I swear by the pap test. It certainly saved my life! It is inconvenient yes - as are mammograms but this is out lives we are talking about! There are women in the US who have to pay a $200 up front deductible for mammograms and we have patients here who we call on a regular basis (every woman after 50 is automatically sent info in the mail and can come in any time for free yet not all of them do and some of them die.) That, I can't explain!
I would not hang around chlorine but it is not high on the list of carcinogens. It might - combined with other chemicals - to someone susceptible- be a cause of possibly aplastic anemia which is on the fringe of being cancer and is debated by some as cancer and some as a form of anemia. As a hematologist and oncologist, I treat it as cancer since in advanced stages, it can turn into an aggressive form of leukemia. Benzene is has been proven to be carcinogenic in some several studies as are many many chemicals - but there are products out there, like 2-4-T that you may have sprayed your lawn with that can kill you yrs later. Or aspartame in Equal that turns into formaldehyde in your body when it combines with other chemicals - also a known carcinogen. I could go on .... and on but I won't. I just wanted to say I wholeheartedly approve of anyone being careful around any of these products, reading labels and not using anything that is a carcinogen.