text: if someone got cancer from a toxin in their drinking water, what type of cancer would it be? technical, scientific answers only please. no guesses. the reason i ask is because i knew a family who had 4 out of 6 members end up with cancer with two of them dying from it over a period of 30 years. they each lived in the house for various periods due to the fact that one of them was a child of the family who grew up and got cancer later in life. both of the original couple got it with the husband dying from it. the second husband got it and the original wife eventually died from it. they all had various types of cancers. also i live in a state where cancer is prevalent, but certainly not that prevalent to happen to that many members of a family.----- they drank well water. as previous answers suggested, different "toxins" affect different body systems.  as a result, you cannot predict what kind of cancer one could get without knowing what kind of "toxin" was ingested.