section_path: Prevention
section_name: Prevention
paragraph_text: Prevention
  
  Cancer prevention is defined as active measures to decrease cancer risk. The vast majority of cancer cases are due to environmental risk factors. Many of these environmental factors are controllable lifestyle choices. Thus, cancer is generally preventable. Between 70% and 90% of common cancers are due to environmental factors and therefore potentially preventable.
  
  Greater than 30% of cancer deaths could be prevented by avoiding risk factors including: tobacco, excess weight / obesity, poor diet, physical inactivity, alcohol, sexually transmitted infections and air pollution. Further, poverty could be considered as an indirect risk factor in human cancers. Not all environmental causes are controllable, such as naturally occurring background radiation and cancers caused through hereditary genetic disorders and thus are not preventable via personal behavior.
  
  In 2019, ~44% of all cancer deaths – or ~4.5 M deaths or ~105 million lost disability-adjusted life years – were due to known clearly preventable risk factors, led by smoking, alcohol use and high BMI, according to a GBD systematic analysis.