Lung Cancer Diagnoses On the Rise Among Never-Smokers Worldwide (theguardian.com) 46
The proportion of people being diagnosed with lung cancer who have never smoked is increasing, with air pollution an "important factor," the World Health Organization's cancer agency has said. From a report: Lung cancer in people who have never smoked cigarettes or tobacco is now estimated to be the fifth highest cause of cancer deaths worldwide, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Lung cancer in never-smokers is also occurring almost exclusively as adenocarcinoma, which has become the most dominant of the four main subtypes of the disease in both men and women globally, the IARC said.
About 200,000 cases of adenocarcinoma were associated with exposure to air pollution in 2022, according to the IARC study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal. The largest burden of adenocarcinoma attributable to air pollution was found in east Asia, particularly China, the study found.
About 200,000 cases of adenocarcinoma were associated with exposure to air pollution in 2022, according to the IARC study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal. The largest burden of adenocarcinoma attributable to air pollution was found in east Asia, particularly China, the study found.
Well Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
"The largest burden of adenocarcinoma attributable to air pollution was found in east Asia, particularly China, the study found."
Remember in the years before covid they were all wearing cloth masks because of the pollution...
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Re: Well Duh (Score:2)
Except no....
Southern California has the highest average lifespan in the country.
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Well what do you know its the midwest and southern states with the highest lung cancer rates. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volum... [cdc.gov]
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But is it high among non-smokers?
I can see those states still having a high proportion of smokers given demographics, culture war stuff, etc.
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Wildfires aren't as hazardous to your health as oil refineries and manufacturing. Companies try to locate those things away from major cities with lawyers and stuff like that.
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Wildfire smoke only lasts for 6-36 hours every 2-5 years and is largely negated by staying inside. I'm not sure historic drought conditions and a handful of recent wildfires is going to have much impact on lung cancer rates in the short or medium term
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Re: Well Duh (Score:1)
Many, yes, but wearing masks is common enough in China just for general health infections reasons - ie if you have a cold/caugh/etc and are on public transport...in my experience anyway.
Not surprising. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the global news stories about the air pollution in China, and the persistent smog(s) associated with that, is anyone really surprised?
Re: Not surprising. (Score:1)
It used to be that "everyone" smokes, but it is significantly less common these days.
Having spent the past few days in Zhenjiang, it was clear things do vary widely across the country - there were several instances of older people smoking inside there (not allowed, strictly speaking), when that wouldn't be acceptable in Beijing.
Things change very quickly in China.
Re: Not surprising. (Score:1)
I think your news is out of date. Pollution levels have been improved drastically.
pollution (Score:1)
Air pollution causes cancer -- WHO.
CO_2 is air pollution -- EPA
Therefore CO_2 causes cancer.
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Because all air pollution = CO2?
Brilliant.
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Off on a slight tangent here, but a lot of countries focused very heavily specifically on reducing CO2 emissions.
CO2 was the target they were measured against, so you had vehicle manufacturers design vehicles to emit less CO2, but this often resulted in greater emissions of other things instead.
A lot of regulation ends up this way, focus too much on a specific thing and it ends up being replaced with something worse.
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Pretty sure that CO2 is a good thing for regular old passenger vehicles. Incomplete combustion is the biggest source of the hazards of car exhaust. The only useful way to lower CO2 on vehicles is better fuel efficiency. I would be interested in seeing citations on the specific vehicle emissions standards that focus on CO2 that you're referring to.
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CO2 was the target they were measured against, so you had vehicle manufacturers design vehicles to emit less CO2, but this often resulted in greater emissions of other things instead.
I very much doubt that.
These are separate problems. Increasing fuel efficiency does not lead to an increase in other emissions. LEVs and ULEVs (stringent NOx and NMOG emissions permile limits) also universally have excellent mileage (low CO2 emissions per mile)
I think you're full of shit.
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Several countries set vehicle tax rates solely based on CO2 and ignoring other factors.
A focus on CO2 in european countries led to increased sales of diesel cars, precisely because they emit less CO2.
Instead you get more PM10, PM2.5, NO2 or NOx, which later became a problem. Now the focus has shifted.
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Several countries set vehicle tax rates solely based on CO2 and ignoring other factors.
No. Part of that sentence is true, the other half of it you made up.
A focus on CO2 in european countries led to increased sales of diesel cars, precisely because they emit less CO2.
Europe has been diesel-heavy since I was a kid. First, the oil shock in the 70s, then advent of really good TDI engines. The European diesel-heavy vehicle population predates concern about CO2 by 2 decades.
Instead you get more PM10, PM2.5, NO2 or NOx, which later became a problem. Now the focus has shifted.
Diesel vehicles are being replaced by electric vehicles.
The focus hasn't shifted, because those that care about efficiency have upgraded to the next best thing.
Diesels are still vastly cheaper than gasoline cars in Europe.
Your narrati
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Various factors, including a focus on CO2 resulted in an increase in diesel sales in many european countries.
For example, UK vehicle tax rates were previously tied directly to CO2 emissions:
https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax... [www.gov.uk]
Now (since 2017) they have explicitly higher tax rates for diesel vehicles because they realised the side effects of solely focusing on co2:
https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax... [www.gov.uk]
The CO2 tied tax rate resulted in a significant increase in sales of diesel vehicles, and prompted manufacturers who
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And witches are made of wood.
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Some air pollution causes cancer
Some CO2 is air pollution
CO2...may have nothing to do with cancer. There is zero data available.
Not sure if your first grade understanding of pollution is intentional or fake, but PM2.5 particulates are the most likely worst culprit.
Huh (Score:2, Informative)
Doctors (well, not M.D.s, you can't see a full M.D. these days) thought it was aging, depression, bronchial infection, low T, because all those things were happening too. Blood tests did not reveal anything. Not until one of my lymph
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(Almost) Everything causes cancer (Score:1)
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One thing found so far that doesn't cause cancer ... https://www.marketwatch.com/st... [marketwatch.com]
So, yoga pants have other benefits.
This is *NOT* saying air pollution is worse (Score:4, Interesting)
The proportion of the population that has never smoked is going up. If how much lung cancer is caused by smoking does not change, and all other cancer is spread evenly among the population, then the proportion of people with lung cancer who never smoked is going to increase. It does not matter if there is more or less or the same amount of cancer caused by air pollution.
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So is the total number of people getting cancer going up? Maybe there's another cause, microplastics, or some o
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I believe the main reasons cancer rates are going up is that there is better detection of cancer, and people are dying less of other things before they get cancer.
Re: This is *NOT* saying air pollution is worse (Score:2)
It's improved a lot in China too. You don't even need statistics to prove it, because it's obvious.
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The proportion of the population that has never smoked is going up. If how much lung cancer is caused by smoking does not change, and all other cancer is spread evenly among the population, then the proportion of people with lung cancer who never smoked is going to increase. It does not matter if there is more or less or the same amount of cancer caused by air pollution.
Beat me to it.
Cancer itself, you'll recall, loomed larger as cause of death after infections were knocked out of first place (by antibiotics). Because more people weren't killed off by infections and now lived long enough to get cancers. Not because cancers magically became more prolific in and of themselves.
Things are gonna shift around, but that doesn't mean that simple soundbites about new positions for the remaining maladies will be all that meaningful.
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That's very true in the first world, particularly North America.
But in certain other parts of the world, it's almost certainly mostly the increase in pollution. The international poster child for this is, of course, China; but a number of other countries have a serious air-pollution problem as well, not least India.
\o/ (Score:1)
Let's see this data alongside:
* prevalence of smoking in movies (as a factor: scenes with one or more smokers divided by total scenes) against time
* Sales of cigarettes against time
Cough cough (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised if microplastics were part of this cancer rise, too. Pick your poison...
Might as well (Score:3)
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>"If pollution is going to kill you might as well enjoy a good cigar in the meantime."
Pipe/cigar smoking very rarely (if ever) involves inhaling smoke into the lungs (my understanding it is generally mouth-only or sometimes mouth-to-nose only). This is why the stats I have seen about men who regularly smoke pipes/cigars (and never cigarettes) are at barely any additional risk for lung cancer vs. non-smokers. I suppose the risk would increase if regularly done inside instead of outside, though (SHS).
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Fentanyl ... (Score:2)
Just don't try to light up a cigarette within 25 feet of a bus stop.
Beware of this info tactic... (Score:2)
no matter whether it's deployed by left-wingers, right-wingers, Republicans, Democrats, non Americans, etc. It's the tactic, and it's deliberately deceptive.
Note the headline: "Lung cancer diagnoses on the rise among never-smokers worldwide". The problematic bit is the "worldwide". When one says "worldwide", the reader is encouraged to think there's an essentially even distribution globally. Had it said "nationwide", the reader would have been encouraged to assume an even distribution throughout the nation.
Recommended readings on lung cancer (Score:1)
The hallmarks of cancer comprise six biological capabilities acquired during the multistep development of human tumors. The hallmarks constitute an organizing principle for rationalizing the complexities of neoplastic disease. They include sustaining proliferative signaling, evading growth suppressors, resisting cell death, enabling replicative immortality, inducing angiogenesis, and activating invasion and metastasis. Underlying these hallmarks are genome instability, which generates the genetic diversity that expedites their acquisition, and inflammation, which fosters multiple hallmark functions. Conceptual progress in the last decade has added two emerging hallmarks of potential generality to this list—reprogramming of energy metabolism and evading immune destruction. In addition to cancer cells, tumors exhibit another dimension of complexity: they contain a repertoire of recruited, ostensibly normal cells that contribute to the acquisition of hallmark traits by creating the “tumor microenvironment.” Recognition of the widespread applicability of these concepts will increasingly affect the development of new means to treat human cancer.
https://www.cell.com/fulltext/... [cell.com]
Then "Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes." Paying specific attention to figure 2. https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Doesn't take much for lung cancer
we show that only three sequential mutations are required to develop lung and colon adenocarcinomas, a number that is lower than what is typically thought to be required for the formation of cancers of these and other organs. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
Hanan Polansky's Microcompetition with Foreign DNA and the Origin of Chronic Disease. https://archive.org/details/mi... [archive.org]
An under recognized risk factor may be viruses. Some lay dormant in most of us. Co-infection with multiple viruses looks to