President Joe Biden has suggested that Delaware’s pollution, including “oil slicks,” may be the cause of the cancer he and “so many” others have experienced.
While giving a speech on climate change in Somerset, Mass., on Wednesday, Biden said that pollution during his childhood was so widespread that people had to wipe oil from car windshields to drive. The president suggested pollution was to blame for the skin cancer he would later experience, saying Delaware had “the highest rate of cancer in the nation.”
Biden said a former Massachusetts official told him how previous pollution meant “people used to take out a rag and wipe the dirt off the windshield of their car just so they could drive” before his speech. He compared the anecdote to his own experience in Claymont, Delaware, where he moved after his family left Scranton, Pennsylvania, when he was 10 years old.
The president explained that Clement was downwind from a city with “more oil refineries than Houston, Texas,” before recalling that his mother sometimes wiped an “oil slick” of dirt off the windshield of the car before driving him to school in the morning. He said pollution is the reason he and others have survived cancer.
President Joe Biden has blamed Delaware’s pollution, including “oil stains” on car windows, for causing cancer. Biden is pictured talking about environmental issues during a speech in Somerset, Massachusetts on July 20, 2022. Scott Eisen/Getty
“Guess what — the first frost, you know what happens?” Biden said. “You’re going to have to put your wipers on to clean, literally, the oil stain off the window. This is why I and so many other people I grew up with have cancer. And why, for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation.”
While it’s unclear whether an oil slick on the outside of a car’s windshield would play any direct role, studies show that air pollution can increase the risk of developing skin cancer. However, skin cancer is thought to be more commonly caused by overexposure to the sun.
Biden was diagnosed with multiple “localized, non-melanoma skin cancers” that were surgically removed before he became president, according to a November 2021 report from his doctor. The report suggests that the cancer may have been caused by Biden spending “a lot of time in the sun in his youth.”
Melanoma has the highest death rate of all skin cancers, although it accounts for only 1% of all cases. Common types of non-melanoma skin cancer include squamous cell carcinoma, which is generally considered very curable, and basal cell carcinoma, which also has a relatively high survival rate.
Cancer rates in Delaware have dropped significantly in recent years, with the highest rate now seen in Kentucky, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics cited by the World Population Review. South Dakota has the lowest cancer rate in the nation.
Newsweek has reached out to the White House for comment.
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