Which Chemical is the Worst Carcinogen?

welcome back I'm Matt chemist and today we're going to be deciding which chemical is the worst carcinogen so if you're like me you've probably wondered about carcinogens before you hear oh this is a carcinogen that's a carcinogen but how much of a carcinogen is it and how do we know that it's a carcinogen so there's this organization called the iarc and that stands for the international Agency for research on cancer it's an intergovernmental agency forming part of the World Health Organization of the United Nations so that's who the iarc is it's an organization which is an intergovernmental agency which is part of the UN its role is to conduct and coordinate Research into the causes of cancer it also collects and publishes surveillance data about the occurrence of cancer worldwide so they have these really great reports that are really thorough talking about all of the science that's LED them to come to the conclusions that they have I was actually surprised with how thorough this was and I have a lot more confidence in them as an agency as a consequence of this so I'd like to congratulate them for making really good resources and if you haven't looked at them before I'd encourage you to take a look I'll include links to all of the references for this video in the description and the majority of the references are coming from the iarc reports before we get into the specific chemicals I just wanted to briefly talk about aggravating factors so for each carcinogen on this list I tried to choose robust authoritative sources for each carcinogen while there are very recent iarc reports on most of these there may be even more recent data on the matter so take any conclusions with a grain of salt the root of exposure and the amount that you're exposed to will impact the incidence of the cancer as will many other factors avoiding exposure to carcinogens is always advisable but as you know life is complicated and there are always other considerations aside from carcinogenicity when you're considering toxicity additionally just because it's cancer doesn't mean it's a death sentence medlife crisis has a very good video discussing this and I'll include a link to that in the description as well so as you know life is full of choices which are consequential and there are many instances where you would accept the presence of a carcinogen and there are many instances where accepting the presence of a carcinogen is totally reasonable why maybe the dose is low maybe there's something more pressing happening right now and I'll just give us straw man argument here which is you know obviously a straw man so don't take it too seriously but if you're dying of thirst you don't care if your drinking water is contaminated with a chemical that's only a carcinogen through chronic exposure right now you're worried about not dying of thirst so you know you can take a sip of the dirty water so that you don't die there's priorities here another straw man example would be choosing to breathe to prevent Suffocation despite the air being polluted with potential carcinogens so those are both straw man arguments but you can imagine scenarios where you'd put up with it so I'm personally less concerned about small exposure to carcinogens for my own personal health because there are many more immediate risks which we face in our day-to-day lives it's important to think critically about the risks that you take and don't fall victim to fear-mongering don't get paralyzed by the fear of taking risks life is taking risks it's about taking wise risks not taking foolish risks and a life lived without any risk-taking is not a life worth living in my opinion what is a life without experiencing the stories that the world has to offer you so all that being said it's still good to minimize your exposure to carcinogens they can have aggravating factors so being exposed to more carcinogens having certain genetic predispositions these can make it more likely that you'd get cancer but with all these things it's about hedging your bets and minimizing risk while also minimizing the amount of ways you have to change your life to avoid exposure to these risks so let's get started let's start with aristocholic acid one so the aristochoic acids are a family of carcinogenic mutagenic and nephrotoxic phytochemicals found in the flowering plant family of birth warts aristocholic acid one is the most abundant member of this family the family aristocrinaceae aristolo Kia includes the Genera aristocalicia I could not say this for the life of me it also includes a different one called azerum wild ginger which are commonly used in Chinese herbal medicine these compounds are widely associated with kidney problems liver and urothelial Cancers urothelial cancers are just cancers of the cells that line the urethra bladder and some other organs the use of aristocholic acid containing plants for medicinal purposes has had a long history in ancient times it was used to treat kidney and urinary problems as well as gout snake bites and a variety of other conditions it was also considered to be an effective contraceptive now if you're wondering why this is a carcinogen it's believed to be a result of the mutation of the tumor suppressing Gene tp53 which seems to be unique to the association of aristocholic acids and their type of cancer since this is common in Chinese medicine it's probably not surprising to you that a study reported in the science translational medicine journal in October 2017 reported High incidences of liver cancer in Asia particularly in Taiwan which bore the well-defined mutational signature of aristocholic acids this is also found in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries when this was compared to rates found in your up in North America the rates in Asia were found to be much higher the iarc has classified this as a group 1 carcinogen and so what does the classification of iarc carcinogens mean the iarc has four different classifications Group 1 group 2A group 2B and group 3. group 1 means that it's carcinogenic to humans that there's either sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity or evidence of carcinogenicity in humans is less than sufficient but there's really strong evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals and strong evidence in exposed humans that the agent can act through a relevant mechanism of carcinogenicity group 2A is it's probably carcinogenic to humans there's limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and sufficient evidence of carcinogenician experimental animals or there's inadequate evidence in humans and sufficient evidence in animals so it seems like there is a good chance but more evidence is needed now group 2B is that it's possibly carcinogenic to humans this would mean that there's limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and less than sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals or there's just inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity in humans but there's sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals group three would be that it's not classifiable as carcinogenic to humans evidence of carcinogenicity is inadequate in humans and inadequate or Limited in experimental animals or evidence of carcinogenicity is inadequate in humans but sufficient in experimental animals but strong evidence that the mechanism of carcinogenicity in experimental animals doesn't operate in humans this would mean that the specific mechanism of carcinogenicity for these agents isn't applicable in humans alternatively if there's an agent that doesn't fall into any other group it would also fall into group three so if something's rated as Group 1 it's confirmed to be a carcinogen that still doesn't tell us how bad of a carcinogen it is everything comes down to context right your body has mechanisms to deal with certain Cancers and prevent the formation of tumors hence as earlier we discussed that tumor suppressing Gene the takeaway is that something in group one is a carcinogen and you should be concerned about your exposure to it so if something falls into group one it's down definitely a carcinogen that still doesn't tell us how bad of a carcinogen it is as you might not be exposed to that carcinogen in your day-to-day life so aristocholic acid I think as long as you're avoiding dodgy medicine you shouldn't be exposed to too much of this so while this is a group one carcinogen I think you can mitigate your exposure by being a wise consumer don't consume plants that contain this and listen to FDA advisories about what not to take in 2001 the FDA issued a consumer health Alert warning against consuming Botanical products sold as traditional medicines or as ingredients in dietary supplements containing aristocholic acid so I think as long as you're avoiding this one you should be pretty good I'm going to put this into D tier because the likelihood that you're going to get exposed to this unknowingly is fairly low next let's talk about acetaldehyde this is also known as ethanol this is one of the most important aldehydes occurring widely in nature also being produced on a very large scale in industry acetaldehyde occurs naturally in all sorts of stuff such as coffee bread ripe fruit and it's produced by plants as well it's also produced in our body through the partial oxidation of ethanol by the liver enzyme ethanol dehydrogenase and is one of the main contributing causes of The Hangover that people experience after alcohol consumption Pathways of exposure include air water land or groundwater as well as in drink and smoke acetaldehyde derived from mucosal which just means in the mucus or microbial oxidation of ethanol tobacco smoke and diet appear to act as a cumulative carcinogen in the upper digestive tract of humans if you're consuming ethanol as a beverage because it can form acetaldehyde it's a group one carcinogen meaning that there is a strong link between the consumption of ethanol the production of acetaldehyde in your body and the causation of cancer if we're talking about air toxins so acetaldehyde as an air pollutant it's only a group 2B carcinogen so the challenge here is how much does it increase cancer risk it is a carcinogen it's confirmed to be associated with an increased risk of cancer for p people who consume large amounts of ethanol the more you consume of the carcinogen in the case of ethanol the higher the incidence of laboratory animals experiencing cancer now do we have some protection against ethanol sure and maybe those lab animals get tumors more than we do but nonetheless it is associated as a carcinogen so it's confirmed to be a carcinogen most people are exposed to ethanol in some shape or form and minimizing your exposure to ethanol is something that we all have control over so since it increases the risk of cancer I think we can probably put it in like B tier it's not as carcinogenic as some of the other carcinogens on this list this probably goes without saying all of my placements of these carcinogens while based on iarc reports and based on my understanding of cancer you should always consult your doctor before making life-changing decisions based on your exposure to different risks just because I say acetaldehyde is B tier doesn't mean you're safe to go drink tons of it and it also doesn't mean it's so dangerous you should never have a drop of ethanol in your life ethanol is everywhere anyway it's present in bread all the time if you have anything fermented there's ethanol in it so you're never fully able to remove it from your life ethanol is just there guys so we should have some tolerance to it now that being said I am not a biochemist so if we're talking about specific mechanisms of carcinogenicity I'm not going to have as good of a background in that sense so I can picture you know chemistry mechanisms really well but it goes without saying that this video is meant to be educational about which chemicals are carcinogens and what the ratings of those cancer causing chemicals are from the iarc the rest of this is for entertainment purposes next we have Alpha toxins Alpha toxins are a class of various poisonous carcinogens and mutagens that are produced by certain molds particularly aspergillus species I actually briefly discussed Alpha toxins in my mold toxins video These fungi grow in the soil decaying vegetation and various staple foodstuffs such as hay sweet corn wheat rice Chili Peppers cottonseed peanuts tree nuts sesame seeds sunflower seeds and many other plants in short the relevant fungi grow on almost any crop or food this is another group one iarc carcinogen meaning that there is evidence it causes cancer in humans personally I think avoiding the consumption of moldy food is something very straightforward in the western world if you have a plant that looks weird if you have a piece of food with some mold growing on it don't eat it how often cancer is caused by exposure to Alpha toxins is something that's harder to measure because life is complex with all of these there can be proven in correlations with increased incidence of cancer but the way all of us live our lives is so different that it's extremely difficult to tune out what effects lead to the formation of cancer it's usually compounding from multiple factors so it's important to avoid it Alpha toxins I would say are probably like an a tier because if you're eating lots of mold you're going to get exposed to a lot more risk next we have four Amino biphenyl this was one that I had never heard of before this was commonly used in the past as a rubber antioxidant and as an intermediate for various dyes research shows that four Amino biphenyl is responsible for bladder cancer in humans and dogs by damaging DNA and due to its carcinogenic effects the commercial production of four Amino biphenyls ceased in the U.S in the 1950s this is another group one iarc carcinogen since the commercial production of this has been removed I think our exposure to this is relatively low and we can probably put this into detier as well I do wonder about the potential risks of chemicals in Old items that we might have inherited I'm going to remind myself to talk about those when we get to lindane next we have aracolin archoline is a nicotinic acid-based mild parasympathetic stimulant alkaloid found in the archaea nut which is the fruit of the archaea Palm our choline has been compared to nicotine however nicotine agonizes nicotinic acetylcholine receptors but our choline is primarily a partial Agonist of the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors so they both Target acetylcholine receptors Although our choline actually targets muscarinic ones ones that muscarine would Target while nicotine agonizes nicotinic acetylcholine receptors current science is confident that chewing areca nuts is carcinogenic and research suggests that it's probably at least partially because of the aracholine itself although it could also be from other constituents of the nut some of which are precursors to nitrosamines that form in the mouth during chewing it oracolin is a group 2B carcinogen so 2B or not 2B that is the question the answer it is 2b so we can put it into each here because most of the time if you're not chewing this obscure nut you'll probably be fine you're probably not going to be exposed to that next we have agarotine agarotein is an aromatic hydrazine derived mycotoxin which occurs in mushrooms of the genus agaricus agartine content varies between specific mushrooms and it also varies from Individual to individual studies of the potential toxicity of agaritin and humans are absent although in high amounts it's used experimentally as a carcinogen in research this is currently a group three carcinogen meaning that there isn't sufficient evidence to consider it a carcinogen in humans so we'll put it into F tier for that reason but more research is needed to confirm whether or not it's carcinogenic in humans next we have Benzene Benzene has had a mixed past and the iarc has changed its stances on it over the years due to increased research Benzene is a natural constituent of petroleum and it's one of the elementary petrochemicals it's a pretty common solvent that's used in Laboratories although its use has fallen out of favor due to concerns surrounding its carcinogenicity I would say despite this though it's still relatively commonly used although nowadays people don't wash their hands with it it used to be a practice historically I've heard even worse stories about practices that go on at drilling rigs and if you have any stories about people washing their hands with solvents I'd love to hear them in the comments one way to understand the carcinogenic effect of benzene is by examining the products that form when biological oxidation occurs so pure Benzene when in the body it oxidizes to produce an epoxide called Benzene oxide this is not readily excreted and it can interact with DNA to produce harmful mutations this metabolite and other metabolites are likely what lead to the observed carcinogenicity of benzene Benzene therefore is a procarcinogen meaning that its mechanism of causing cancer depends on its enzymatic conversion into carcinogenic metabolites Benzene is an iarc Group 1 carcinogen so Benzene exposure is something that most people have because it's present in gasoline it's present in fuels in small amounts so we're going to be exposed to Benzene inevitably Benzene is a fairly strong carcinogen when oxidized I think we can probably put this one into B tier as well you can control your exposure to some extent its carcinogenicity really depends on exposure levels there's some on here that are way more carcinogenic next let's talk about benzodine you can see this one kind of resembles our four Amino biphenyl it's almost the exact same there's just an extra amino group the conversion of benzodine into biz-diazonium salts was once an integral step in the preparation of direct dyes the main one being Congo red in the past benzodine was used to test for blood an enzyme in blood causes oxidation of benzodine to a distinctively blue color derivative and there's a similar test for Cyanide that relies on the same sort of reactivity there's been a strong link between benzodine and bladder and pancreatic cancer there are many examples discussed in the iarc report and here's a picture of that benzodine is a group one carcinogen and because it's not used as much anymore I think we could probably rank it a little bit less harsh but we'll put it into C tier because there is very strong links between bladder cancer and exposure to benzodine okay this one looks a little bit fancier this is benzo a pyrene there are a whole bunch of different Pyrenees and so we're only just talking about this one as it's a common notable one this ubiquitous compound can be found in coal tar tobacco smoke and many foods especially grilled Meats it's dial epoxide metabolites more commonly known as bpde react with and bind to DNA resulting in mutations and eventually cancer a scrotal cancer which is cancer of the scrotum of chimney sweepers the chimney sweeps carcinoma was already known to be connected to soot this compound is also a pro-carcinogen don't be a nugget avoid eating burnt food if you're eating food that's burned black that's because there's chemicals that are black which means it's extremely conjugated more likely than not there's probably going to be some benzopyrine in there so don't eat Pro carcinogens this can also go into Beach here it's bad but like you've eaten burnt food before and you don't have cancer yet so is it bad yes and minimize your exposure to burnt food but it's extremely unlikely that you get cancer from eating burnt food a handful of times this next one is a really scary one so this is Biz chloromethyl ether and the way that this usually accidentally forms is in protocols that utilize formaldehyde and hydrochloric acid so this can form through some side reactions and believe it or not this chemical was actually produced on a large scale at one point but it was found to be highly carcinogenic and so the production of this chemical has ceased it was produced industrially from a mixture of para formaldehyde and a mixture of chlorosulfonic acid and sulfuric acid it was also produced as a byproduct of the blank chloromethylation reaction which is formed when formaldehyde and hydrochloric acid are mixed and when you buy technical grade chloromethyl methyl ether this is also another contaminant so the issue here is this oxygen has a lone pair that it just dumps onto the adjacent carbon forming an oxonium and this oxonium is an extremely good electrophile this is an oxygen mustard this alkylates stuff like nobody's business and because it has two of them both sides can alkylate stuff so now you're randomly alkylating parts of your cells and linking them together this stuff is awful s-tier next we have chloromethyl methyl ether basically the same thing except there's a methyl group on one side and a chloromethyl group on the other this one and the previous one are both iarc Group 1 carcinogens and if you know your organic chemistry mechanisms and you see an alpha chloro ether you know that this stuff is extremely toxic and the other name for this chemical is Mom chloride this is the chloride we have at home thanks Mom this can also go right into s tier okay butadiene one three butadiene is important as an industrial precursor to synthetic rubber long-term exposure to butadiene has been associated with cardiovascular disease and there's consistent association with leukemia as well as a significant association with other cancers this is another group one carcinogen as long as you're avoiding exposure to monomers such as butadiene I think you can avoid the risk for the most part we'll put this one into B tier again because you can avoid your exposure to these ones more or less I think acetaldehyde we could probably be a little bit harsher and why don't we move that one back up to a tier because I think there's a very decent risk that you'll be exposed to acetaldehyde at least a greater risk than there would be exposure to one three butadiene cyclosporine this is a calcinarian inhibitor which is an immunosuppressive drug used as an immunosuppressant medication it's a natural product and it's taken orally or intravenously for rheumatoid arthritis psoriasis Crohn's disease nephrotic syndrome and an organ transplants to prevent organ rejection cyclosporine is listed as an iarc Group 1 carcinogen meaning that there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans specifically leading to squamous cell skin cancer and non-hodgkin Lymphoma this is an interesting example where we have a legitimate medicine that has actual applications but it is simultaneously a carcinogen so sometimes things can have really helpful uses but they also come at a cost and the cost of cyclosporine is increased carcinogenicity I.E increased risk of cancer with use I'm no biologist but my guess is that because it's an immunosuppressant drug it causes other cancers that would have been suppressed to form instead because the immune system isn't able to fight those tumors as effectively I'm going to put cyclosporine into a tear because if you're seriously taking this for some illness you're running the risk of increased incidence of cancer next we have one two dichloropropane this is a byproduct from the industrial production of epichlorohydrin which is produced on an enormous scale industrially this is once used as a soil fumigant although it also saw use as an industrial solvent and was found in paint strippers varnishes Furniture finish removers although some of these uses have been discontinued following several cases of bile duct cancer amongst Japanese printing firm employees an investigation by the Japanese minister of Health labor and Welfare included in March 20 13 that these cases were likely due to the use of cleaning agents containing 1-2-dichloropropane data from animal studies show tumor growth in the liver and mammary glands further animal studies involving inhalation toxicity data caused the National Institute for occupational safety and health to classify one two-dichloropropane as a carcinogen and idlh this is a group 1 carcinogen oftentimes people just use products at Home Depot and they don't think about any of the risks of the chemicals that are included I would personally Advocate that companies always list all of the ingredients so that consumers can make an informed Choice your ability to make a buck and your ability to have more staying power in the economy isn't as important as the consumer's ability to make the safe choice I would always opt to buy products that list ingredients so that you know what you're being exposed to now most of the time a ton of research has gone into which solvents work best for these so they know what's in them they're just choosing to not tell you if they don't list it if we find out in another decade or two that another common solvent we've all been using is a carcinogen you'd be pretty upset that it wasn't labeled on every single bottle that you ever bought because I'm sure now at this point you're wondering do I have any of that in my garage well who knows even if you did they might not say and that's pretty awful so one two dichloropropane we'll put this one into a tier as well because it it's got two chloroalkyl groups that are likely adding to their effect as alkylating agents now I don't know why it's an issue in sliding like 1 2 dichloropropane but it's not an issue in sucralose if any of you can rationalize why the chloro groups in sucralose are not problematic but the ones in one two dichloropropane are I'd love to hear your discussion on the matter in the comments or on Discord next we have diethyl stillbestrol this is a non-steroidal estrogen medication here I'll just show the difference between the structure of this and the structure of estrogen this is currently rarely used but in the past it was widely used for a variety of indications including pregnancy support for those with a long history of recurrent miscarriages hormone therapy for menopausal symptoms and estrogen deficiency as well as the treatment of prostate and breast cancer by 2007 it was only used in the treatment of prostate cancer and breast cancer because in 1971 Des diethyl stylbestrol was shown to cause clear cell carcinoma a rare vaginal tumor in those who had been exposed to this medication in utero so if you were a baby while your mom got this this could lead to a rare form of vaginal tumor this is a group 1 carcinogen and some of these estrogen mimicking chemicals happen to also be carcinogens so since this one has a very limited use now I think we could put it into B tier but it's clear that it still poses a risk as a carcinogen which is why it doesn't get used as much anymore ethylene oxide we talked about Ethylene an oxide in the video which chemical is the most risky in 2003 there was a study of 6576 women who were exposed while at work in commercial sterilization facilities these people were sterilizing stuff so that there was no potential microbial contamination ethylene oxide is commonly used as a way to sterilize stuff and this study concluded that ethylene oxide is associated with breast cancer incidents there's evidence from both human and animal studies that inhalation exposure to ethylene oxide can result in a wide range of carcinogenic effects as such it won't surprise you that this is a group one iarc carcinogen I will put this into a tier because I think that there is a decent risk for people who are doing sterilization with ethylene oxide although for most people this is probably a non-issue formaldehyde formaldehyde has many many uses in 1996 the installed capacity for the production of formaldehyde was estimated to be 8.7 million tons per year it's mainly used in the production of industrial resins such as for encodings or for particle board the CDC considers formaldehyde a systemic poison formaldehyde poisoning can cause permanent changes in the nervous system's functions Studies have also shown a positive correlation between exposure to formaldehyde and the development of leukemia particularly myeloid leukemia formaldehyde is also a relatively common allergen oftentimes if you have shampoos or something you have this formaldehyde hydantoine derivative I'll include the structure of that on screen now and this works by slowly releasing formaldehyde to prevent microbial growth formaldehyde is a group 1 iarc carcinogen and as such I'm a little bit surprised that it still gets used in so many consumer products formaldehydes everywhere it has a very distinct smell if you've ever smelled formaldehyde before and it's a really good electrophile it's like the aldehyde it tries to polymerize all the time so it's probably cross-linking stuff similar to how we saw Biz Chlor methyl ether cross-linking stuff I'd like to make a prediction that we're going to see less formaldehyde used in the future people used to make food last longer with it but then there is a bunch of studies that showed that that was a terrible idea and if it's still being used in shampoos and whatnot I'm a little bit concerned about that and maybe maybe we should do less of that okay formaldehyde I'm going to put into B tier because it's still used fairly commonly and stuff maybe not as free formaldehyde but as like formaldehyde precursors and if there's stuff that's slowly releasing formaldehyde and it's allowed to be in consumer products I'm gonna hope that this is at acceptable levels and hey if anybody from the iarc is listening I would strongly recommend that you look into that hide Antoine claim because if consumers worldwide are being exposed to more formaldehyde from these this could be a potential risk factor for increased incidence of cancer so formaldehyde we'll put into B tier maybe it belongs in a higher tier only time will tell okay lindane lindane is a chemical Tom briefly discussed in his recent video on extractions and ire I'll include a link to that in the description if you haven't checked it out lindane is a chemical that's been used both as an agricultural insecticide and as a pharmaceutical treatment for lice and scabies the World Health Organization classifies lindane as moderately hazardous and its international trade is restricted and regulated by the Rotterdam convention on prior informed consent there is debate between organizations as to whether or not this chemical is definitely a carcinogen but the iarc has classified it as a group one carcinogen heavily chlorinated stuff like lindane is just super toxic in terms of doing bad things to stuff which is why it has uses right it's doing bad things to stuff and we should do less of it so I think for the most part as long as you're not using random old insecticides or pesticides that your parents or grandparents have you probably shouldn't be exposed to this too much so I'm gonna put this one into like B tier because it's still pretty nasty but you might get exposed to it unknowingly next we have methoxy saline this is a medication that's used to treat psoriasis eczema Vitiligo which is a disease that causes the loss of skin color in patches and some cutaneous lymphomas in conjunction with exposing the skin to ultraviolet light specifically UVA from lamps or sunlight so this chemical is only a carcinogen in the presence of UVA so as long as it's separated from UVA it shouldn't be carcinogenic at all it's been found as a natural product in several plants when combined with UVA containing light it's a carcinogen so where should this one go well if we leave you in the dark it can go right into F tier so why don't we put it into F tier but hey if you're taking this as a medication and you're spending some time outside this can go right into s tier this one's a little bit odd looking this is 4 4 Prime methylene Biz chloroaniline this is a substance that's used as a curing agent in the production of polyurethane the abbreviation for this chemical is MoCA and it's an aromatic amine which is structurally similar to benzodine that known bladder carcinogen now you might think when we look at benzodine and we look at MOCA that these look kind of different but this is still structurally extremely similar right there's two amino groups at the end of a stick this is just a flexible stick animal Studies have resulted in tumor growth in the liver lungs and bladder so this is a group 2B carcinogen and it's carcinogenicity is to be determined so we can put this one into probably e tier because there's been clear studies of benzene and amino biphenyl that cancer could be caused but there's not as strong evidence in humans for this yet although structurally they're very similar another similar one is two naphthalamine two naphthalamine was formerly used to make Azo dyes but it is a known carcinogen and it has been mostly replaced by less toxic compounds two naphthalamine is also found in cigarette smoke and it's suspected to contribute to the development of bladder cancer this is another group one carcinogen as such I think if you're smoking you're going to be exposed to this more don't smoke tobacco if you can avoid it and you might be thinking what do you mean if you could avoid it who knows two naphthalamine as it's present in cigarette smoke means that it's a relatively high risk I think for that reason we can put it into a tier don't smoke kids don't smoke tobacco okay next we have n n and despite this not being November this is nitroso nor nicotine which is a tobacco-specific nitrosamine produced during the curing and processing of tobacco although no adequate studies of the relationship between n n n and human cancer have been reported there is sufficient evidence that nnnnn causes cancer in experimental animals nnnnn is produced by the nitroation of nor nicotine during the curing and aging process as well as the smoking process of tobacco so basically this is the structure of nicotine normally there's this methyl group here and when nor nicotine is formed through the demethylation of nicotine this can form an nitrosoamine and these nitrosamines are very carcinogenic roughly half of the nitroso nor nicotine originates in the unburnt tobacco while the remainder forms during the combustion of it I suspect that the new salt mix also are doing more of this because the nicotines in the salt form so it's easier to form nor nicotine nor nicotine is able to more easily form nitroso nor nicotine therefore the free base is likely to have less of this issue because the amine group isn't protonated it's harder to cleave the methyl group although as far as I know there's no clear study showing this this is just my conjecture so n nitroso nor nicotine this is a group one iarc carcinogen this can go right into s tier smokers are known to get lung cancer this is one of the main reasons why okay so we have another one kind of like n n n which is known as nnk and nitrosomethyl amino 1 3 parietal one butanone and you might think this looks completely different than nitroso nor nicotine but to a chemist this looks basically identical so the difference here is that the methyl group of nicotine is still on there and the nitrogen group from The paroleidine Ring has just opened up to form this Ketone in the heterobanzilic position so if you're using an e-cigarette this won't convert nicotine into nnk due to the low operating temperature but as you're getting to some of those fancy Vapes that Vape at a much higher temperature or potentially as you use salt mix this is likely contributing to the formation of nnnn and nnk although this is my conjecture at this point this is another group one carcinogen leads to the formation of cancer this can go right into s tier as well nitroso groups are bad news speaking of bad news we have two three four seven eight pentachlorodi benzophuran this is a little bit obscure but polychlorinated dibenzofurans are ubiquitous environmental pollutants which have great potential for human exposure to characterize the toxicity of this a bunch of rats were exposed to a single dose of this at various levels and a progressive dose-dependent loss of body weight was evident by three days after treatment signs of toxicity include pilo erection which is like the Goosebumps you get where hair stands up on its end animals do this in response to cold we do this in response to cold as well but it doesn't do anything because we don't have fur anymore the rats also experience hair loss hypoactivity which means that they were doing less morbidity and death death occurred as soon as 14 days after treatment and continued throughout the 35-day observation period this is a group one iarc carcinogen and these polychlorinated oxygen containing benzenes are usually bad news this one can go right into s tier pentachlorophenol this is one that's a little bit obscure but you still see in chemistry Labs from time to time this is an organochlorine compound used as a pesticide and also as a disinfectant short-term exposure to large amounts of pentachlorophenol can cause harmful effects to the liver kidneys blood lungs nervous system immune system and gastrointestinal tract some common side effects of exposure to pentachlorophenol include elevated temperature perfuse sweating uncoordinated movement muscle twitching and coma since the early 1980s the purchase and use of pentachlorophenol in the U.S has not been available to the general public nowadays most of the pentachlorophenol is restricted to the treatment of utility poles and railroad ties which I thought was kind of interesting that we're still using that but pests will always be a pest bridges in similar structures can also be treated using this chemical finally exposure to pentachlorophenol is associated with carcinogenic renal which means your kidneys are affected and neurological effects the iarc classifies pentachlorophenol as a group 1 iarc carcinogen so pentachlorophenol it's another carcinogen it's on railroad ties and stuff so as long as you're not licking railroad ties you'll probably be fine I think if you're looking railroad ties you probably have other issues going on so we'll put that into a tier next we have dioxin in fact this is the dioxin 2378 tetrachlorodi benzoparidioxin this is usually formed as an unwanted product in burning processes of organic materials or as a side product in organic synthesis it's largely agreed that this chemical itself is not directly mutagenic or genotoxic but its main action is that it promotes cancer it promotes carcinogenicity initiated by other compounds so I'm going to show a really gross picture of this condition right now this is your warning hey if you can't get to your TV in time hey we're going to give you a break here we're going to give you like a nice 10 15 second break yep we're just talking about stuff doing stuff this is the part of the video you can skip over if you don't want to see the gross thing the the gross thing is about to come up I'm about to show it okay here we go this is the gross thing this is known as Chlor acne and I actually decided I'm not even going to show it at this video but I'll include a link to it in the description it's disgusting I nobody should look at this don't look at the don't look at the picture I posted in the description it's pretty nasty and this is one of those things you can't unsee once you see it you might think oh last time I heated your warning you might be one of those people who didn't click on the rabbit video in the nerve agent tier list and you're probably happy that you didn't click on it you might be thinking oh should I have clicked on it no you shouldn't have and you shouldn't click on this either but I'm going to include a link in the description in case you want to see it it's pretty gross okay so this is uh involved with a promotion of cancer this is another group one carcinogen we can put this one also into s tier we have a few interesting ones left here let's talk about phenicidin phenicedin is a pain relieving and fever-reducing Drug which was widely used following its introduction in 1887. unfortunately this is basically Tylenol with an ethyl group sticking off of the oxygen this is the structure of Tylenol this is the structure of phenicidin phenicedin has been shown in animal models to have the side effect and after effect of carcinogenesis the formation of cancer in humans many case reports have implicated products containing phenicidin and urothelial neoplasms especially urothelial carcinoma of the renal pelvis in the metabolism of phenicidin a minority of the time the acetyl group is removed from the amine producing the chemical paraffinidadine where it's just an nh2 with a paraethoxy group this is actually carcinogenic so therefore phenicidin is a procarcinogen this is a group one procarcinogen we can put this one into a tier okay we have a few really nasty ones left let's talk about sulfur mustard So eventually I'll do a full video on mustard agents at some point and sulfur mustard is a chemical compound belonging to the family of cytotoxic and blister agents known as mustard agents mustard gas has had a long history of being used as a blister agent in Warfare and is one of the most well studied of such agents it can form large blisters on exposed skins and in the lungs often resulting in prolonged illness ending in death mustard gases are extremely toxic and have powerful blistering effects on victims their alkylating capabilities makes them strongly carcinogenic and contaminated areas may appear completely normal victims can unknowingly receive high doses within 24 hours of exposure victims experience intense itching and skin irritation if this irritation goes untreated blisters filled with yellow fluid can start to form wherever the agent contacted the skin these chemical burns are very debilitating now despite that sulfur mustards can actually be used in chemotherapy and I'm working on another video about chemotherapy agents that should come out at some point in the near future so sulfur mustard it's terrible it's a Warfare agent it causes acute and chronic issues it's extremely carcinogenic it's a sulfur mustard s tear we have three chemicals left orthotology orthotologyudine is a chemical I was first made aware of in the very first episode of Hamilton's pharmacopoeia which is an episode that discusses the clandestine synthesis of methaqualone Ortho Amino toluene is a common building block for many purposes however cytochrome p450 mediates and hydroxylation to n-hydroxy orthotyleudine which is a carcinogenic metabolite this forms in the liver this can either be metabolized to orthonitroso toluene or it could be conjugated with glucuronic acid or sulfate and transported to the urinary bladder via the blood once it's in the bladder this can be released from the conjugates in the acidic urine environment and it could either react with DNA or can be bioactivated via sulfation or acetylation by cytosolic sulfotransferases or an acetyl transferases this is likely why it causes bladder cancer it was actually really shocking to see in that episode that the clandestine chemist who is working with this had experienced blood in their own urine there's blood in here blood in your urine yeah you know it's known to cause bladder cancer blood cancer bladder cancer so this is a pretty scary one orthotyledine was changed to known to be a human carcinogen as it was especially linked to bladder cancer although mechanisms of the carcinogie of orthotyledine are not completely understood the available evidence suggests that they are complex and involves several key modes of action including metabolic activation that results in The Binding of reactive metabolites to DNA and proteins mutagenicity oxidative DNA damage chromosomal damage and cytotoxicity this is a group one carcinogen we can put this right into s here we have two left trichloroethylene and vinyl chloride a couple vinyl chlorides here so trichloroethylene it's a halocarbon commonly used as an industrial solvent research from cancer bioassays performed by the National Cancer Institute showed that exposure to trichlorethylene is carcinogenic in animals producing liver cancer in mice and kidney cancer in rats the health risks of trichlorethylene have been studied extensively the National Academy of Sciences concluded that evidence on the carcinogenic risk and other potential health hazards Associated from the exposure to trichlorethylene has strengthened the U.S Environmental Protection Agency EPA sponsored a state of the science review of the health effects associated with exposure to trichloroethylene this is a group 1 carcinogen and as it's commonly used as an industrial solvent this is a common pollutant in water runoff hopefully we can minimize our exposure to this one moving forward I'm going to put this into a tier last but not least we have vinyl chloride this colorless compound is an important monomer for the production of vinyl which is also known as PVC if you have a vinyl record it's polyvinyl chloride which is one of those things that took me way too long to realize final chloride is a known human carcinogen that causes a rare cancer of the liver posing elevated risks of rare angiosarcoma brain and lung tumors and malignant hemopoetic lymphatic tumors this is another group one carcinogen and if you're working around monomers maybe you'll get this rare cancer of the liver if it's a rare cancer of the liver that suggests to me that its incidence is relatively low so as long as you're not working around the monomer Vinyl chloride you probably shouldn't be exposed to it too much so hopefully this is an interesting video discussing several different carcinogens we might be exposed to in our day-to-day life I like covering topics that involve public health and I hope to do more videos similar to this in the future thanks for watching and I hope you have a great day the family aristoclesier aristola KCA I can't even say this for the life of me aristocal Aristo Loco aristolo Aristo Loki ACI the family Arista Lo croatiai in 18th century a scrotal cancer of swimming cheapers if you're a fan of butyl rubber you might be a form of butadiene butadiene a little bit spooky I think as long as you're exposing yourself I said as long as you're avoiding because you can put you can avoid because you can avoid and as a pharmaceutical treatment for life and scape ruffle originates in the unburnt tobacco unquorded paraffin acetidine paraffin acidic paraffinity [Music]

Channel: That Chemist

Views: 1,075,457

Keywords: that chemist, organic chemistry, chemistry, organic synthesis, carcinogen tierlist, cancer causing tierlist, cancer tierlist, that chemist cancer tierlist, that chemist carcinogen tierlist

Id: R_MLl3O4dKo

Length: 44min 21sec (2661 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2023