Cancer death rates are falling, but more young people are getting diagnosed. The good and bad news from the annual cancer progress report.

Here’s the good news: The number of people dying from cancer has dropped by more than 30% compared with 30 years ago. Thanks to falling rates of smoking, better screening and prevention measures and treatment advancements, there were 18 million cancer survivors living as of January 2022, according to the American Association for Cancer Research’s 2024 Cancer Progress Report.

But cancer rates among younger people continue to climb and the causes remain unknown. However, as one expert tells Yahoo Life, you’re not “powerless,” and changes to seven modifiable risk factors could cut cancer rates dramatically.

Here’s what to know.

1. More Americans are getting diagnosed with cancer — but more are surviving

The number of new cancer cases in 2024 is projected to rise to more than 2 million, compared with 1.83 million in 2022, according to the AACR ’s report. By 2050, that number is expected to rise to 2.53 million. “That’s because the population is growing and getting older,” Dr. Michael Pignone, the Rebecca and John Kirkland Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the Duke School of Medicine, who also worked on the report, tells Yahoo Life. And the rate of new diagnoses — how big a share of the population — has actually fallen, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Meanwhile, the cancer death rate is declining, the new findings show, falling by a third from 1991 to 2021. That translates to 4.1 million lives saved. “We’ve really made incredible progress in the last 30 years on reducing the cancer death rate,” Pignone says. He attributes this marked decline in fatalities to improved prevention and screening efforts, advancements in treatment options and better survivorship care.

2. Rates of some cancers and deaths from them are rising among younger adults

Although the big picture of progress against cancer looks good, there are some worrisome trends on a more granular level. More younger people are being diagnosed with and dying from certain cancers, including colorectal cancer. From 2017 to 2021, the rate of these cancers rose by more than 3% per year among people younger than 50 — even as the rate fell by 2% among people older than 65, according to the AACR report. And the rate of under-50s dying from colorectal cancer has risen by about 1% annually.

However, “colorectal cancer is still mainly a disease of older people, but we’re seeing a signal among young adults,” says Pignone. It’s not entirely clear why — “I don’t think there’s going to be one [singular] explanation,” Pignone says — but both he and the AACR flag several key suspects: rising rates of obesity and diabetes, poor-quality diets, sedentary lifestyles and alcohol.

When it comes to the broader upward trend in early-onset cancers, it’s likely driven by environmental factors, meaning something not inherent to a person, like their family history or genetic makeup. “Last time we saw this kind of trend, cigarette smoking rose really rapidly, and 20 years later, lung cancer rose very rapidly,” Dr. Tim Rebbeck, a professor of cancer prevention at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, tells Yahoo Life. “When this happens, it has to be an environmental exposure,” of which researchers consider smoking one.

3. The strong link between alcohol and cancer

After cigarette smoking and excess body weight, the AACR ranks alcohol consumption the third leading risk factor for preventable cancers. And the report calls out alcohol in particular as one of the “early life exposures” that have been more common in recent decades and which researchers think may be driving the rising rates of early-onset cancer. Those cancers include colorectal and breast cancer, notes Pignone.

It’s long been known that “alcohol gets broken down into metabolites that are carcinogenic,” and that “manifests over a number of cancers,” he explains. Alcohol is also a cause of liver, head and neck and esophageal cancers. “We probably shouldn’t be encouraging people to drink; I shouldn’t say to people who aren’t drinking that you should be drinking that glass of red wine a night,” Pignone says, adding that there’s no longer reason to believe the benefits outweigh the risks.

4. How the environment can be carcinogenic

Radon gas exposure is the number one cause of lung cancer in people who don’t smoke, according to the AACR. Dr. Patricia LoRusso, a medical oncologist with the Yale School of Medicine, is particularly disturbed by the rising rate of colorectal cancer and lung cancer among young nonsmokers. Radon gas forms as a result of uranium breaking down in the soil, rocks and water, and it can leach from the ground into homes. It is highly carcinogenic and responsible for an estimated 21,000 cases of lung cancer annually, along with the deaths of 2,900 never-smokers each year.

It’s one environmental factor that we know directly causes cancer — but many more compounds lurking in air pollution, in the aftermath of wildfires, in our water and in products we use every day are linked to increased risks of cancer. They may also be contributing to the rising rates of cancer in young people, but ultimately, “we don’t know if it’s environmental or some predisposing factor or some alteration,” LoRusso tells Yahoo Life. “We need to do our homework — not only to be able to understand why it’s happening or how to treat it, but hopefully to prevent it.”

5. 40% of all cancers are preventable. Here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe.

Seven modifiable risk factors are responsible for 40% of cancers, according to the AACR: smoking, excess body weight, alcohol consumption, UV radiation, poor diet, infections and physical inactivity. Many of these are the same factors that researchers suspect are fueling the specific rise in colorectal cancers among young people. And while there’s a lot of uncertainty about whether, how or to what extent factors like obesity and environmental chemicals may contribute to cancer risks, most of these factors are within our control. “We’re not powerless,” says Rebbeck. “Don’t smoke, keep your weight at a healthy level, limit alcohol consumption, don’t eat processed meats — there are plenty of things you can do to lower your cancer risks.”

But he adds that although all these behaviors are changeable, doing so isn’t easy. For instance, “It’s great to say, ‘Lose weight,’ but losing weight is very difficult; there’s a barrier to actually being able to implement things that are very difficult to do,” Rebbeck says. That’s where policy changes to make it easier for people to access places to exercise or buy healthy food or to discourage alcohol consumption are necessary, he says.