Lung Cancer Among Non-Smokings Increases, What Causes It?

Lungs (Pexels/Anna Shvets)

JAKARTA - Lung cancer in people who do not smoke is increasing. Lung cancer in people who do not smoke is estimated to be the fifth leading cause of death from cancer worldwide.

The main cause of lung cancer increasing in non-smoking people is air pollution. This was conveyed by the International Agency for WHO Cancer Research (IARC).

Lung cancers in people who never smoke also occur almost exclusively as adenocarcinomas, which have become the most dominant of the four main subtypes of disease in men and women globally, the IARC statement, reported by The Guardian, on Wednesday, February 5.

About 200,000 adenocarcinoma cases in the lungs are related to air pollution in 2022, according to an IARC study, published in the journal Lancer Respiratory Medicine. Adenocarcinoma is spread due to air pollution found in the East Asian region, particularly China.

The study lead author and head of the IARC cancer control branch, Dr Freddie Bray, said the findings became a reference for the importance of urgent monitoring of changes in the risk of lung cancer.

Further studies to identify possible causes, such as air pollution, in pollution where smoking is not considered the main cause of lung cancer are also needed, said Dr Freddie Bray.

Through the IARC study, it was also stated that changes in cigarette manufacturing and smoking patterns in recent decades have affected the trend of lung cancer cases based on subtypes. There is also accumulated evidence that shows a causal relationship between air pollution and an increase in lung cancer.

Air pollution can be considered an important factor that partly explains the dominance of adenocarsinoma that appears to account for 53 percent to 70 percent of lung cancer cases among people who have never smoked around the world, the content of the study.