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| Photo Credit: AP. |
US President Joe Biden Wednesday said he has cancer from fossil fuel emissions in what appears to be a gaffe.
The President made the remark about a potential deadly disease in a speech about global warming, citing emissions from oil refineries near his boyhood home in Claymont, Delaware, The Washington Times reports.
“That’s why I and so damn many other people I
grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest
cancer rate in the nation,” he said, according to The Washington Times.
Biden had skin cancers
Washington
Times reported that Mr Biden has skin cancers that had been cleared up before
he took office but was caused by sun, not fossil fuel emissions.
As a young
man, Biden worked as a swimming pool lifeguard and later in-life skin cancers
are common in that line of work, especially when sunscreens were luxury goods
and weaker than what is available now, according to Washington Times.
A health
report last year by Dr. Kevin O’Connor, stated that Mr. Biden “has had several
localized, non-melanoma skin cancers removed with Mohs surgery before he
started his presidency. These lesions were completely excised, with clear
margins,” Washington Times reported.
Dr. O’Connor
said Biden’s cancer were the result of the president having spent “a good deal
of time in the sun in his youth” and did not mention any current cancers, The Washington
Times reported.
“There are
no areas suspicious for skin cancer at this time,” he wrote.
Mr Biden was
speaking in Somerset Massachusetts near a power plant that is being converted
to supporting offshore wind farms, according to The Washington Times.