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What is risk?

When people talk about your risk of cancer, they are trying to explain how likely you are to get cancer. You may hear lots of different things about risk - from the media, your doctor, your friends and the internet.

This page will explain a little more about what risk means. But for in-depth information about how we calculate and communicate risk go to our Cancer and Research section on understanding 'risk'.

What affects your risk of cancer?

Your risk of cancer is influenced by many things. The genes you inherit from your family, the environment you live in and the way you live your life all affect your chances of getting cancer. The choices you make will affect your risk of cancer over your lifetime.

But life is impossible to predict. Making unhealthy choices doesn’t definitely mean you will get cancer. And you may still get cancer even if you are very careful to be healthy. But making healthy choices does mean that you are less likely to get cancer.

Changing risk

How likely you are to get cancer is also affected by your age. Cancer is more common amongst older people, so as you get older your risk of cancer increases. For example your risk of developing breast cancer in your twenties is 1 in 1,900 but in your fifties it rises to 1 in 50.

When someone talks about ‘lifetime’ risk they mean your risk of developing cancer over your whole lifetime. For example, a woman's lifetime risk of breast cancer is 1 in 9.

Comparing risk

Risk is usually measured by studying large numbers of people to look for patterns in who develops cancer. This is why you may hear about a certain group of people having a greater risk of cancer compared to another group of people. For example, smokers have a much greater risk of lung cancer than non-smokers.

Risk factors

Things that increase your chances of developing cancer, such as smoking, being overweight or working with asbestos are called ‘risk factors’.

Some things increase your risk of cancer more than others. One of the biggest risk factors for cancer is smoking. For non-smokers, we think the next most important risk factor is body weight. So if you want to make a big difference to your cancer risk don't smoke and make sure you have a healthy body weight.

More information

There is more information about how risks are measured and compared in the Cancer and Research understanding 'risk' section.