More young people are getting colon cancer. Here is what you can do to protect yourself

Sydney Morning Herald

18-06-2025

Do you want the good news, or the bad news? The good news is that the rates of colon cancer in the over-50s are falling. The bad news? Cases of colon cancer, also known as bowel cancer, are rising in younger people, with numbers more than doubling in Australia since 2000. Australia now has the highest rates of reported early-onset colon cancer among 50 countries worldwide.
While the falling rates in older Australians have coincided with the introduction of the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program, attention is now turning to the alarming rise among young people, with one in nine Australians diagnosed with bowel cancer under the age of 50.
The list of suspects for the increase is long, but rising rates of overweight, obesity and inactivity in younger adults are major contenders, says Professor Karen Canfell, professor of public health at the University of Sydney.
'There's already good evidence that they can cause colon cancer, and a major line of inquiry is the extent to which under-50s are now affected by them – it's likely to explain part of the phenomenon.'
Diet, alcohol, smoking, early exposure to antibiotics, and infection from E.coli bacteria are other suspects. So is a relative newcomer: microplastics, those invisible fragments of plastic in food and water that can end up inside us, say a group of researchers and colorectal surgeons from Monash University and Cabrini Health in Melbourne.
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Not-so-fantastic plastic
Reading their recent summary of what's known so far about the impact of microplastic in the gut in the ANZ Journal of Surgery makes you regret ever sipping water from a plastic bottle or diving into a takeaway container of green curry – especially when you learn that adults consume up to 52,000 particles each year, with babies and small children potentially taking in more via plastic drink bottles.
'We're seeing more young patients with rectal and distal colon cancer, often without the usual risk factors. This motivated us to explore whether microplastics could contribute in some way,' says senior author Dr Vignesh Narasimhan, a colorectal surgeon at Monash Health and Cabrini Hospital.