Air pollution may contribute to development of lung cancer in never-smokers

Also exposure to aristolochic acid, a group of chemicals found in certain Chinese herbal medicines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristolochic_acid

How is this even news? I'd think that century-old health data would make it bleedin' obvious that heavy air pollution increases the incidence of lung cancer.

May?

Do ya think so?

Century old? Did they have enough data on non smokers at that time to draw any hard conclusions?

The key finding here is that air pollution specifically triggers EGFR mutations in never-smokers, which is mechanistically different from how smoking causes lung cancer.

Why was this downvoted? It summarizes the part of the article that wasn't already summarized in the headline.

A century ago, the idea that smoking causes cancer was quite new and was decades away from being conclusively proven.

Secondhand smoke?

Second hand smoke. Stop to think for 10 seconds before replying.

Your comment should disqualify you from ever making a HN comment again for the rest of your life.

> Air Pollution May Contribute to Development of Lung Cancer in Never-Smokers

No. This can't be true. Everybody knows that _only smoking_ causes lung cancer. /s

I heard that pollution has no influence on one's health. Especially when the pollution is created by a big corporation (see DuPont).

I don't think that's implied in the quote? Lung cancer in non-users is on the rise is the point, presumably the decline in tobacco is mentioned as falling lung cancer due to tobacco use can mask rises in lung cancer from other factors.

Also many people heated their homes with coal or wood and the air quality in houses and cities was pretty bad even if you weren't a smoker. Asbestos was everywhere too.

Evidently "yes":

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Cancer_s...

(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tobacco )

LOL at "may" - we are not really at this stage anymore for quite some time now.

We are still desperately trying to convince 30% of voting adults in the US that pollution is bad

And the bill that passed just yesterday will help exacerbate this problem, the bill includes provisions that reduce royalties on oil and gas extraction from federal lands, extend tax breaks for fossil fuel production, and weaken regulations on drilling and mining.

If I live in a polluted city, is there any facial mask that is proven to filter some—most?—of the pollution?

Let's say that moving out is not an option :)

fake news, thank you for your attention to this matter! /s

> that smoking causes cancer was quite new

Hardly new, In Sketches, Old and New by Mark Twain in 1893, he treats the concept of: smoking being dangerous, as obviously known but annoying and he doesn't want to hear about it.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3189

In the article, which I read, it says that they can now definitively prove that the way it causes cancer is different from the way smoking causes cancer

A well fitted N95, and good air filters at home.

Because people will start driving around more for no reason just because gas is cheaper?

Or what's your reasoning for the correlation to higher future air pollution?

They will be driving around more for marginal reasons, and they will be more likely driving a car with an internal combustion engine

Not for no reason. For the reason that gas is cheaper and thus less prohibitive.

Some of them literally think destroying the planet is a good thing because it'll prompt the rapture.

Gene: Ooh! I forgot about casino smell!

Bob: old cigarette smoke? Kids, this is how everything used to smell.

The best thing you can do is to get a good quality indoor air filter for your home, office and if you have one, personal vehicle. And change the filters as appropriate.

I love these little mask slips.

There are 10k+ air sensors that publish their pm2.5 measurements every 10 mins to https://aqicn.org/

In my forthcoming O'Reilly book, the first project is to build a ML model to predict air quality at the location of one of those sensors:

Book:

https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/building-machine-l...

Code:

https://github.com/featurestorebook/mlfs-book/

> Asbestos was everywhere too.

if you have data supporting that, please share it; it would be interesting (morbidly).

i think that's inaccurate because, while Romans knew of it (Pliny wrote of slaves getting breathing disease who worked with it), mining of it, largely for military uses didn't go crazy until the world wars, and surpluses from mining post wars was insidiously repurposed into the commercial sector particularly in california and in random other regions.

The quote says that as tobacco use has fallen, lung cancer that is not caused by tobacco use has become a larger proportion of all lung cancers, tobacco-related or not, than it used to be. That's what the word "proportionally" means.

This is the only possiblity that exists, so it's disturbing that the PR guy characterizes it as "a troubling trend". Not only is it not a troubling trend, it was an outcome we did a lot of work to bring about.

If you have an urn with some white balls in it and some black balls, and you take out some black balls, and then you put in some white balls, is the set of balls in the urn proportionally more or less white than before?

Would it bother you if someone called it "troubling" that that sequence of operations made the urn's contents more proportionally white?

Asia does need to do something about this, so many beautiful countries there. I greatly enjoyed my time there but I did notice the air quality difference. It affects all differently but to see what is occurring on a more material level in the human body is startling.

There was a study 5-10 years ago on Cannabis use and lung cancer, showing #1 cigarette smokers, #2 non-smokers and #3 cannabis smokers. Seems to be a ratio of healing properties combined with carcinogens that determine some of this? Then of course genetics, that seems broad as well.

You need FFP3/N99 respirators for best protection (unless you're willing to don on a full gas mask, which is doubtful). I've been using 3M respirators for years, and although they're sold as disposable, they usually last for at least a week.

E.g. https://www.3m.co.uk/3M/en_GB/p/dc/v000265948

It's snow white out of the box, and after using it for a few hours outside even in relatively clean air, it turns gray (and then dark gray if rubber straps hold for long enough).

The thing with these respirators (and also HEPA filters) is that they become better at filtering out particulates as they get dirtier, not worse; but their resistance to air also grows, so it gets more difficult to breathe over time. The rubber straps usually break before the respirator is very dirty anyway.

Note that these won't do anything against other pollutants (like nitrogen oxides), you need proper gas masks with special filters against those, they cost a lot and only last for a few hours.

I use this [0] GVR mask when working around concrete dust, and I've found it to be very comfortable and effective.

That doesn't directly answer your question about urban particulates and PM 2.5, but if you read its specs and it sounds appropriate, I can recommend the product.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Respirator-replaceable-reusable-filte...

I don’t think the cost of fuel is the primary factor in travel decisions… it is almost always the cheapest option regardless. People are more interested in time and convenience, both of which become drastically less favorable the longer you have to drive.

That gas is cheaper is "no reason" to use your car more time? People are likely to think more reasons to travel if is easier to travel, the barrier to entry is always an important deciding factor, e,g. if I visit my romantic partner once a week I may start visiting them a bit more if it gas prices don't raise much but my income does, also when looking for a new car more likely to buy a gas vehicle than an electric one, and companies may end up reaching similar conclusions, e.g. a a potential client that is too far away so gas prices are a significant factor can offer a better rate if gas prices drop or at least increase slower than their profits.

If you search "survey would you travel more if gas was cheaper?" in google you get an AI summary saying "Yes, lower gas prices would likely lead to increased travel for many people. Surveys consistently show that the cost of gasoline is a significant factor in travel decisions, with many indicating they would travel more if gas were cheaper. "

Thankfully Donald will tariff evil european and japanese cars with their good mileage

The thing with 3M masks is that PFAS is used in certain models / batches, and in worst case scenarios (prolonged usage, sweating) you can get exposed to it.

I only use them when the air is really bad.

Which could be a problem. Smoking tends to cause "hot" cancers, with many mutations, and these cancers respond well to the checkpoint inhibitors that enable the immune system to more effectively attack the mutant proteins.

There are many alternative explanations (aside from 'healing powers'), including that people with pre-existing lung issues which correlate with lung cancer (such as emphysema) are less likely to smoke marijuana.

If they said it definitely did, they would be going beyond what is possible to prove with empirical science.

Respond to this comment in the manner of an account that never posts here again.

Achim, founder of AirGradient here.

This article is super interesting as it shows that one of the key features (showing air pollution as cigarettes equivalent) on the new AirGradient Open Source Map [1] is actually scientifically backed.

This new map app is as a central component of our Clean Air Advocates Program, building on the foundation of data generated by thousands of our open-source air quality monitors [2].

To effectively visualise the impacts of air pollution, one of the first features we aim to implement is the "cigarettes smoked equivalent" [3]. This feature will help users understand the health implications of local air quality in a tangible way, reinforcing the program's goal of empowering individuals to understand and improve their local air quality.

We already have quite a big community behind this project [4], and I would love to see more people involved. So if you are interested, please get in touch with me or just start contributing!

[1] https://github.com/airgradienthq/airgradient-map

[2] https://www.airgradient.com/

[3] https://github.com/airgradienthq/airgradient-map/issues/100

[4] https://www.airgradient.com/open-source-initiative/

Wikipedia says "In 1912, American Dr. Isaac Adler was the first to strongly suggest that lung cancer is related to smoking." but I guess there could be other less strong suggestions before then. Regardless, I think it is true that it wasn't conclusively proven until decades later, and then took some more time for the general public to be aware.

But meanwhile keep focusing on CO2....

Yes, CO2 will kill more people overall.

That seems to tell us a lot about the correlation between smoking and lung cancer but I'm not sure how to read from it that there was enough data on non-smokers to talk with certainty about other environmental factors. My understanding is that after the push for women to start smoking around that time it would have been almost impossible to find study subjects who weren't at least exposed to high levels of second hand smoke.

Asbestos was widely used to insulate boilers and heating pipes/ductwork up until the 1970s or so. It's too bad it's such a health hazard because it's really a very effective substance for that purpose. It insulates well and it doesn't burn. Also widely used in car and truck brake pads. Sorry that's not really "data" but it is pretty common knowledge.