For example, in Japan, gastric cancers are already much higher than in the US (like 5x more frequent), and there is evidence it is due to higher salt, smoked foods, H. pylori, genetics, and higher screening. If you are looking for the impact of a specific environmental pollutant, Japan v. US has a great example too: professionals hypothesize that because their cigarettes are equipped with a different kind of filter, Japanese OR of lung cancer due to smoking is like 15, compared to the US's 30-60.
There is likely a combination of trends, and maybe environmental pollutants play a little bit of a role. But you could definitely ban PFAS and microplastics - whatever that means - and still observe obesity rates rising, more sedentary lifestyles, more salt and processed food intake, etc., and maybe you'd get 280% increase in colorectal cancer instead of 325% for the next 20 years. Ultimately you could spend your money investigating PFAS and microplastics, or you could spend it investigating all the soap people put on their assholes, all the weird cosmetics they use on their mouth and face, the horrible shit they eat, or any number of things whose incidence rate is also a chart going up and to the right, but might interact with the colon quite literally more directly.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c04844
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4637576/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004565352...
