Scientists discover how air pollution triggers lung cancer in non-smokers in ‘revolutionary’ research
- The study highlights the health risk posed by tiny particles produced by burning fossil fuels, and could pave the way for a new field of cancer prevention
- It is ‘exciting’ because ‘we could look for precancerous lesions in the lungs...and try to reverse them’, Tony Mok at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said
Scientists said on Saturday that they had identified the mechanism through which air pollution triggers lung cancer in non-smokers, a discovery one expert hailed as “an important step for science – and for society.”
The research illustrated the health risk posed by the tiny particles produced by burning fossil fuels, sparking fresh calls for more urgent action to combat climate change.
It could also pave the way for a new field of cancer prevention, according to Charles Swanton of the UK’s Francis Crick Institute. He presented the research, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, at the European Society for Medical Oncology’s annual conference in Paris.
Air pollution has long been thought to be linked to a higher risk of lung cancer in people who have never smoked. “But we didn’t really know whether pollution was directly causing lung cancer – or how,” Swanton said.
Traditionally it has been thought that exposure to carcinogens, such as those in cigarette smoke or pollution, causes DNA mutations that then become cancer.
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But there was an “inconvenient truth” with this model, Swanton said: previous research has shown that the DNA mutations can be present without causing cancer – and that most environmental carcinogens do not cause the mutations.
