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

(today.ucsd.edu)
142 points gmays | 1 comments | 04 Jul 25 18:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.243s | source
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bell-cot ◴[04 Jul 25 19:18 UTC] No.44467129[source]▶
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.
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streptomycin ◴[04 Jul 25 19:58 UTC] No.44467398[source]▶
A century ago, the idea that smoking causes cancer was quite new and was decades away from being conclusively proven.
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ars ◴[04 Jul 25 20:43 UTC] No.44467743[source]▶
> 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

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1. streptomycin ◴[05 Jul 25 02:11 UTC] No.44469584[source]▶
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.