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

A new study reveals that air pollution, traditional herbal medicines and other environmental exposures are linked to genetic mutations that may contribute to the development of lung cancer in people with no or hardly any history of smoking.

“This is an urgent and growing global problem that we are working to understand regarding never-smokers,” said Maria Teresa Landi, epidemiologist in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the NCI and co-senior author of the study. “If there is a mutagenic effect of secondhand smoke, it may be too weak for our current tools to detect,” said study co-first author Tongwu Zhang, an Earl Stadtman Investigator in the Biostatistics Branch of the NCI. Q&A with Ludmil Alexandrov, professor of bioengineering and cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego, who is a co-senior author on a study uncovering a genomic link between air pollution and lung cancer in never-smokers.

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