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Increase of wildlife cancer: an echo of plastic pollution?

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 9, page 842 (2009)Cite this article

The Science and Society article Wildlife cancer: a conservation perspective (Nature Rev. Cancer 9, 517–526 (2009))1 sparked our interest. Its authors McAloose and Newton noted that “in the marine environment, increases in spontaneous benign and malignant tumours have been identified over the past two decades”. With regard to the causes of wildlife cancers, the authors acknowledge that besides mechanisms such as allograft transmission and viral oncogenesis, environmental contributors to cancer in animals should be identified as a priority.

Although a range of industrial and agricultural pollutants with effects on the environment has been identified, these defined contaminants are usually confined to some locality and are therefore unlikely to be the cause of the suggested global increase of wildlife cancers, particularly in oceans. This is why we wish to attract attention to a global, rather than local, candidate that possibly contributes to the global increase in cancers: plastics (or synthetic monomers2), in all their variety.

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Acknowledgements

This contribution is based on interdisciplinary cooperation within the International Master of Environmental Science Programme (CIMES Cologne).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Thomas Erren and Dominique Zeuß are at the Institute and Policlinic for Occupational Medicine, Social Medicine and Social Hygiene, University of Cologne, 50924 Köln, Germany.,

    Thomas Erren & Dominique Zeuß

  2. Frank Steffany is at the Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology, University of Cologne, 50923 Köln, Germany.,

    Frank Steffany

  3. Benno Meyer-Rochow is at the School of Engineering and Science, Jacobs University Bremen, 28759 Bremen, Germany.,

    Benno Meyer-Rochow

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  1. Thomas Erren
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  2. Dominique Zeuß
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  4. Benno Meyer-Rochow
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Correspondence to Thomas Erren.

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Erren, T., Zeuß, D., Steffany, F. et al. Increase of wildlife cancer: an echo of plastic pollution?. Nat Rev Cancer 9, 842 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc2665-c1

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