I should be dead.

I use a cell phone. I’ve bought new vehicles with that infamous “new car smell.” I’ve taken in my share of second hand smoke years ago at numerous meetings I covered that would drag on for hours long before smoking was banned in public places. I’ve drank cyclamates. I eat two apples a day skin and all. I have a PG&E Smart Meter.

At one time or another all of those things were thought to cause cancer. The list of things that reportedly can cause cancer is endless. It could probably fill this entire newspaper.

That is not to dismiss the dangers. You do anything enough and you can suffer ill-health side effects.

But it would seem if we spent less time reacting like Chicken Littles to the latest health scare and more time taking care of business which is treating our bodies with a bit of respect we’d all be better off.

It would be callous to say we’ve all got to die of something but it is true. And who in their right mind would want to do something that accelerates the potential of checking in prematurely assuming we really have a handle on what “prematurely” is for each and every individual.

The problem is the latest cancer scares and such are always presented in a vacuum.

Take cell phones for instance. Yes, there is low level radiation and yes it make sense that younger people are more susceptible to it given their skulls aren’t as thick although some would argue they can get pretty thick at times.

Even if cell phones kick up the risk of certain brain tumors slightly, how many lives have cell phones saved whether it is immediately being able to summon medical help in an emergency or police and fire services? Shouldn’t such a study be presented at the same time to keep things in perspective?

The same was true of the Alar scare back in the late 1980s that the Environmental Protection Agency fanned with a report that showed a cancer risk that ran contrary to reports commissioned by pro-consumer groups such as the Consumers Union.

Supposedly Alar used on apples to regulate growth, make them easier to harvest, and enhance their color as well as better preserve them during the trip from orchard to market created an unacceptably high cancer risk.

The Consumers Union’s own studies estimated the lifelong cancer risk to humans to be 5 per million as opposed to 50 per million as reported. The EPA typically considers anything above 1 per million people for lifetime cancer risks to be justification for an alarm.

Ready for the punch line: The cancer risks were based on one consuming a tremendous amount of apple juice a day. Some put it as high as 50,000 gallons.

Now ask yourself the flip side of the question. How many people are better off consuming apples than other things in their diet that may have a higher cancer risk such as well done meat?

The cyclamates scare is even more to the point. The Food & Drug Administration banned the artificial sweetener on 1969 after eight out of 240 rats injected daily with cyclamates that was the equivalent of what a human would take in if they drank 350 cans of diet soda a day developed bladder tumors. By the late 1980s the FDA conceded - just as 55 countries have - that all available evidence did not qualify proclaiming cyclamates as a carcinogen in rats or mice.

So compared to someone ingesting way too many calories and piling on weight that could cause other health problems and premature death how does the use of cyclamates stack up?

We’ll never know as by their very nature such cancer studies are myopic and can’t take into account other factors such as an individual being more susceptible to cancer through nature’s DNA lottery or an individual being more liable to die from other bad health habits as opposed to the item being studied.

Statistics compiled by the Center for Disease Control indicate those born in this country in 1900 could expect to live 49.2 years as opposed to 77.5 years for someone born in 2003.

Say what you want about chemicals and technology but by all measures we are living a heck of a lot longer which means we’ve been given the opportunity to have things kill us today that weren’t killing our forefathers.