Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/well/lung-cancer-nonsmokers.html

by alexcos • 1 year ago

222 345 1 year ago

nytimes.com

alexcos• 1 year ago

Non-paywall: https://archive.ph/nsMoH

jmclnx• 1 year ago

Not being a scientist of any kind, I fully believe it is fossil fuel emissions, mainly from autos.

When I was very young, where I lived, a city of 100000, I would say less than 50% of the people there drove plus most worked in the city they lived in. Now, almost every household has at least 2 autos and most drive at least 10+ (16km) miles to work.

But, I also wonder if this is tied to the general increase in cancers for people under 50.

0points• 1 year ago

Modern cars should be equipped with a catalysator, making the majority of pollution to be Co2, worsening the global warming.

To some extent heavy metals are being distributed in the air by the wheels in heavily populated areas.

This can be greatly improved by limiting traffic in heavily populated areas. Trump removed such a rule from New York City recently for reasons I can not comprehend.

Many european cities have improved air quality successfully and hence increased life expectancy by limiting car traffic.

The majority of air pollution of particles however, is caused by the industry (the companies making those cars, among others).

In fact, you are a worse polluter of the earth today if you buy a new Tesla than if you kept driving your 1980s gasoline car due to the amount of pollution created by producing a single vehicle.

danielbln• 1 year ago

Particulate matter is still a huge problem, mainly produced by tires and break pads, but also road abrasion. In terms of pure engine exhaust, catalysts don't do much here, you'd need a particulate filter, which not all cars have. So, cars still a problem wrt cancer, as particulate matter is carcinogenic.

uzj1005• 12 months ago

European cities were especially bad because the EU pushed diesels while having significantly less emissions controls than gas vehicles until the mid 2000s. Most of the vehicles impacted by ULEZ are those same diesels.

codyb2• 1 year ago

I know no one's ever going to change their ways cause of the increasingly evident ravages of climate change but I swear I feel like throwing rocks at the big SUVs rolling by with exactly one person in them during the heat domes here in NYC.

Just, so, gross.

And it truly is the _vast majority_ of cars going by with exactly one person in them. So wasteful, so much pollution, so hot... frustrating.

RajT882• 1 year ago

I get it. My wife drives a big SUV. She is a small lady, and says the car let's her see the road better and overall feel more safe.

Back when SUV's started to get popular, this was a trend they noticed as well. Back then, it was met with a lot of guffaws about yuppie housewives and all that. (This was before the term Karen had been coined)

doubled112• 1 year ago

We really like our station wagon. Well, in principle at least. We won't get into the details of keeping a 12 year old German car going.

It's fuel efficient. It's not big. It's a decent people mover. It has more cargo space than many SUVs that are larger. Is low enough the roof racks are easily accessible. Added a hitch, mostly for more cargo space.

I'm starting to wonder if I've done more "truck things" than many of the people with trucks in the neighbourhood at this point. If I ever need to haul more, I'll just rent a truck/van for that moment in time. I'm not going to buy one to drive to the office.

tbrownaw• 1 year ago

big SUVs rolling by with exactly one person in them

My mini-suv seems to be getting about double the gas milage my old normal car did.

2OEH8eoCRo02• 1 year ago

Now imagine the massive global polluting supply chain to put that SUV together for a single person.

bamboozled2• 1 year ago

But they are so tough though...

skeezyboy3• 12 months ago

yet they live in a wooden house... boggles the mind

999900000999• 1 year ago

Ohh it's definitely cars.

In more ways than one. A lot of "poor" countries have life expectancies comparable to the US. The big difference is they don't have a culture of every single person needing to own a car that spray carcinogens all over the place.

Obesity, which is its own massive wrecking ball, is also significantly lower in these "poor" countries.

The arrogance of laughing at poor people riding bikes to work when that would create a drastically healthier society.

Imagine if you had a 4km x 4km city with no consumer vehicles ( emergency and delivery exempt). Just walking paths and bike lanes. The people living there would be drastically healthier.

Or hell, it might just be luck. A lot of smokers live until there 80s enjoying a fat cigar once a day

SchemaLoad2• 1 year ago

It's honestly such awakening experience to see videos or visit these "poor" low GDP, stagnant economy countries and see their streets are full of happy, healthy people out walking, talking with each other. Kids out playing on the street, old people dancing in the parks. And then see our rich cities where everyone sits in traffic scoffing McDonalds raging out at other people doing the same. Huffing in diesel exhaust and tire microplastics.

mrob• 1 year ago

I think people underestimate the impact of air pollution because it's so easy to get desensitized to it. Try wearing a respirator with good seal and filter in an urban area for 10 minutes or so. When you take it off you'll probably smell vehicle exhaust you didn't notice before. Human sense of smell tends to tune out constant low level background odors, but they can still be a sign of something harmful.

Enginerrrd• 1 year ago

For sure. I live in an area with superb air quality and going down to LA and trying to take a run feels like smoking a couple of cigarettes.

potato37328423• 1 year ago

I think you grossly underestimate the degree to which cars (and industry that we had yet to kick out to China) were dirtier decades ago than they are today.

We're talking like literal orders, plural, of magnitude when comparing between the generally no cats automotive fleet of the 70s with anything since the advent of both cats and computerized fuel injection. Any old timer can tell you of the smog that used to be frequent in urban areas. These days it's mostly gone, at least when California or Canada (depending on where you live) isn't on fire.

(INB4 people who are a net negative to public discourse construe this comment as some sort of endorsement for everyone driving everywhere all the time)

2OEH8eoCRo02• 1 year ago

Cars were dirtier but I think there were fewer.

uzj1005• 12 months ago

You emit less driving a new Ford F-150 Raptor from Texas to Alaska than using an old school gas lawnmower for two hours.

It's crazy how efficient and low emissions our engines today are, compared to 50 years ago.

asdff5• 1 year ago

Pollution was way worse in the past. Old pictures of american cities from 50 years ago look like Beijing. We hadn't yet offshored heavy industry by that point and like you said, a larger percent of the metro was living closer to it. And whatever you saw outside was actually better than your air quality inside where these pollutants would accumulate and mix with Dad's cigarette smoke.

This was the air you were breathing back then (1, 2, 3).

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...

2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/SKYSCRAP...

3. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satev...

pfortuny• 1 year ago

The thinking used to be that smoking was “almost the only cause of lung cancer,” said Dr. Maria Teresa Landi, a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Well, that tells a lot: overfocusing on a single cause because it is obvious and major. Well, let us hope the medical science learns this lesson.

ETA: not that I blame them, it is a reasonable attitude but not so good in science.

SoftTalker• 1 year ago

Not jumping the paywall but I'd guess that because relatively nobody smokes cigarettes anymore, cases of lung cancer with other causes are now more of what doctors are seeing.

JKCalhoun• 1 year ago

Did jump the paywall — and FTA, regardless, the question remains what causes these non-smoker lung cancers. Issues of environment and heredity are discussed.

mgh2• 1 year ago

bell-cot• 1 year ago

Leah Phillips, of Pewee Valley, Ky. Doctors first mistakenly diagnosed her with asthma and then anxiety. Later, they said she had pneumonia. When an oncologist finally told her in 2019 that she had metastatic lung cancer, he gave her six to 12 months to live. “Go home and get your affairs in order,” Ms. Phillips remembered him saying. She was 43, and her children were 9, 13 and 14.

(One of many cases mentioned in the article.)

Before you head for the lab, to start researching "why" - maybe you should tighten up the standards for diagnosis and testing? That could enormously improve the qualities & quantities of life for a huge number of patients.

Apreche• 1 year ago

It happens more in women, especially in countries with traditional gender roles. They are doing more cooking in the kitchen where there is fire.

drdrey• 1 year ago

not in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/united-states-cancer-statistics/publicat...

cogman10• 1 year ago

The US fairly typically has electric stoves. Natural gas stoves are going to be the second most common form of cooking.

In the countries the OP is talking about, people cook over literal fires and fire pits (sometimes enclosed). Even when that happens in the US, unless you are talking about camping, you are likely talking about something like a well vented wood stove or wood stove oven like my grandma had.

An example of what I'm talking about: https://unfccc.int/climate-action/momentum-for-change/financ...

And here's what wood fired stoves look like in the US even 100 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcuznPQjLs

iancmceachern• 1 year ago

Its pollution, I door and outdoor, chemical and combustion.

nancyminusone3• 1 year ago

Every time you look up something related to Radon, it's always cited as "the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking"

I wonder if that's really true.

Radon is a big deal where I live. Most homes have a radon mitigation system which is a 20-watt fan that goes over your sump pump hole, and runs continuously to a vent on the roof.

abakker• 1 year ago

I bought an Airthings radon monitor because of that stat, and one thing that I have learned is that those mitigation systems do not necessarily work. I have a system that works, but initially, even though my house had a system, it did not reliably keep the radon levels below the federal action level.

Barometric pressure, temperature, and HVAC all seem to have some bearing - tightening the house for air leaks actually did a lot of good in keeping levels low. Also, sump pump failures or ground water levels can "push" radon into the house. I dug a deeper sump pit and also put a secondary radon fan to pull air out of my sub-foundation drain pipes to ensure the air below the house is cycled.

Still, in Boulder County, my house will fail its radon test after a 2 hour power outage.

I am an evangelist for continuous radon monitoring, alerts and tests.

nancyminusone3• 1 year ago

I bought one of those because I have a couple radium clocks and a nice sample of uraninite, which is a tiny collection compared to the real enthusiasts but probably more radioactive stuff than the average person has. Radon is in the decay chain.

I've never seen above 0.7pC/L which is pretty good, although I don't know what proportion of the activity that is there is natural, or how much more it would be without the fan. I'm not sure what the natural radon levels even are in my area, I think the radon fan is just part of code here.

colordrops4• 1 year ago

My house is a raised foundation and they covered all the ground underneath with plastic and put perforated pipes underneath that pull the air out. Radon went down 10x. The company has a 5 year guarantee.

simonsarris• 1 year ago

tightening the house for air leaks actually did a lot of good in keeping levels low

Wait, really? Intuitively I would expect the opposite, that a draftier house is better for radon levels indoors

colordrops4• 1 year ago

I bought a house in the hills of Los Angeles and we tested for radon. Turned out it was very high, and LA is one of the few places in California that has high radon. We got it mitigated, and it wasn't that expensive. I talked to neighbors and real estate agents, and no one wanted to know anything about it. I was shocked. Everyone is pulling the wool over their own eyes here.

Spooky234• 1 year ago

It’s knowledge that can only hurt you if you’re selling houses. Just like lead paint - it’s smart to be dumb.

severino• 1 year ago

We got it mitigated, and it wasn't that expensive

What's the process, usually, adding some special ventilation system to the house?

asdff5• 1 year ago

Do you have a source for the high radon in LA? According to this county source it is pretty low in LA county but much more pronounced in Ventura county (1% homes with high levels vs 14%). I imagine there is some potential for accumulation effects but this is probably much worse in markets where the homes actually have basements.

http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/eh/safety/radon.htm

etaioinshrdlu• 1 year ago

Much of LA has some of the worst air in the country, so I think it selects for people who don't care about being poisoned by their environment.

ellisv• 1 year ago

An estimated 38% of homes in my county have elevated radon levels.

We tested for radon when we bought our house and found the levels to be very high.

Fortunately the builders had installed a passive mitigation system so all we had to do was install a fan.

prawn2• 1 year ago

I have never heard of radon as a domestic health concern (40+, have owned multiple houses). Does this vary by country or relate to mitigation industries in a locale?

WorkerBee284742• 1 year ago

It varies by the amount of uranium underneath you. So yes, by country/state/province/etc.

daemonologist• 1 year ago

It varies with geology yes, produced by the radioactive decay chains of U-238 and Th-232.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2408084121

If I recall correctly it can accumulate more readily in basements, so that's another factor. The house I grew up in had an exhaust system installed due to elevated radon levels.

degamad• 12 months ago

Varies by geography, so yeah, by country as well. It's a major issue in the US as per the comments in this thread, but here in Australia, almost the entire country[0] has indoor radon levels at 5% or less of the concern threshold level[1]. A few people near certain industries may need to be concerned, but it's not the issue it is in the US.

[0] https://www.arpansa.gov.au/understanding-radiation/radiation... [1] https://www.arpansa.gov.au/understanding-radiation/radiation...

mppm• 12 months ago

Every time you look up something related to Radon, it's always cited as "the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking"
I wonder if that's really true.

That claim is in fact based on extremely poor research methodology. It is made by combining the linear no-threshold model of radiation damage (which contradicts everything we know about cellular repair and hormesis) with evidence from "case-control studies", a kind of retroactive hand-waving that has nothing whatsoever to do with a "controlled trial", despite the name.

phkahler• 1 year ago

Are lung cancer rates up? Obviously eliminating or reducing the primary cause will lead to larger percentages of the other causes among cases.

_mlbt• 1 year ago

On the surface, the data from the American Lung Association appears to support that hypothesis...

https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/lung-ca...

bamboozled2• 1 year ago

The graph seems to shoe me it's peaked and is back on the way down ?

dinfinity8• 1 year ago

Yes, also, the base rate of smoking in different groups is important to take into consideration to prevent the base rate fallacy.

Very few Chinese American women smoke (~2%), so if smokers and non-smokers have the same chance of getting lung cancer not caused by smoking, then the number of non-smokers with lung cancer will be a larger proportion.

If 100% of some group would be non-smokers, then obviously 100% of lung cancer cases in that group will be in non-smokers.

It's similar to misinterpreting the fact that most people that were hospitalized from Covid-19 were vaccinated.

blueflow5• 12 months ago

It's similar to misinterpreting the fact that most people that were hospitalized from Covid-19 were vaccinated.

Whats the correct interpretation of this?

cbsmith• 1 year ago

Yeah, this title for the article is really terrible. The "why" that scientists are investigating is not why many lung cancers aren't in nonsmokers. The "why" they are investigating is "why are these non smokers getting cancer?". Once smoking stops being such a dominant cause, you put more energy into the other cases.

irrational7• 1 year ago

It would be radon, wouldn’t it?

calf• 1 year ago

Except reducing the first cause does nothing about whether air pollution is a nontrivial factor. And nonsmoker cancers are a nontrivial proportion since they account for 10-25 percent of lung cancer worldwide, please just read the article.

Besides the base rate fallacy there is the fallacy of assuming only the biggest factor is what matters, when other factors are nontrivial weights already. Another fallacy is the fallacy of relativizing a problem framing by insisting on comparison with an obsolete problem --campaigns against smoking have done a lot, so why are we still comparing today's problems against the problems of the 20th century. It smacks of "well, things were even worse back then", which surely the base rate fallacy is not trying to suggest.

0cf8612b2e1e• 1 year ago

I do wonder if non-smokers are segregated based on second hand exposure: have a parent/spouse who smokes. Casino employees may have to spend a full shift bathed in smoke.

lelanthran• 12 months ago

And nonsmoker cancers are a nontrivial proportion since they account for 10-25 percent of lung cancer worldwide, please just read the article.

I read the article, but I can't tell if there's a real problem or not. Having "nonsmokers accounts for 10% - 25% of lung cancer worldwide" doesn't leave me any wiser or more informed. Maybe I missed it in the article, so the rest of my comment is pointless, but ...

What's the percentage of lung cancer in nonsmokers? 10% of the pop? 1%? 0.00001%? Whatever the answer is, why isn't it in the article? Then we can see what "10% - 25% of $BASE_RATE" actually is. If we're seeing "10%-25% of 0.0001%", then that sorta tracks as fine, TBH.

The article seems almost designed to mislead: What's the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers? What's the base rate of lung cancer in smokers?

For example, if the base rate of lung cancer in smokers is 25% and the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers is 0.1%, then I don't see a problem here; funds directed to eliminating the remaining causes of lung cancer will be better spent on other research.

OTOH, if the base rate of lung cancer in smokers is 25% and the base rate of lung cancer in nonsmokers is %15, then I see a real problem here: maybe we need to direct more research funds towards lung cancer[1].

My expectation is that, with smoking so rare, lung cancer in the combined population must be very low, compared with the time when smoking was not rare.

-----------------------------------

[1] Actually the problem is worse than that: if there was a singular cause for that 15% in my example, then we it would have been cheaper to target that cause instead of spending dollars reducing smoking.

llm_nerd• 12 months ago

Are lung cancer rates up?

Incidence rates have been steadily dropping, in many areas by over 50% from 1990. Mortality rates have fallen faster still.

So yes, it isn't that other things picked up, but that as smoking has become a fringe other causes proportion naturally increases.

hansonkd• 1 year ago

I used to live by a busy street in a semi-dense part of town. Cars would be going around 45mph.

When I moved from that apartment after 4 years. I was shocked by the amount of black dust covering everything. from the walls to the shelves and floors. I think it was all tire pollution so switching to 100% electric won't mitigate.

It was pretty shocking and I wondered how much i increased my risk for lung cancer or other cancers.

tmountain• 1 year ago

I was just talking to my wife about playgrounds using shredded tires as the "mulch". I don't know where the rubber comes from, if and how it is cleaned, or what particulate material it carries, but it seems dubious at best.

nartho• 1 year ago

Those are known to be particularly awful and dangerous, particularly on hot days, and have been banned in a lot of places.

nancyminusone3• 1 year ago

My (wealthy) high school had a "turf" field which uses little rubber pellets as the "dirt". Those were probably shredded tires too. During football season you would see them tracked around the school, and if you were a football player or in the band they would show up at your house.

also, they would periodocially dump "more dirt" onto the field, once every year or so. Not sure if they vacuumed the old stuff up or just dumped more on top, but sometimes you would go out there and there would be a huge pile of rubber in the middle, which I guess got spread out later

awakeasleep• 1 year ago

6PPD (N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N′-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine) •Purpose: Antioxidant to prevent rubber cracking. •Danger: When it reacts with ozone and air, it forms 6PPD-quinone, a toxic compound shown to kill salmon and other aquatic life at trace levels. •Status: Under increasing regulatory scrutiny (e.g., Washington State has started restricting it).

⸻

2. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) •Purpose: Byproducts from extender oils and carbon black. •Danger: Known carcinogens, mutagens, and endocrine disruptors. Persist in the environment and can leach from tire wear particles. •Status: Regulated in the EU; linked to air and soil contamination.

⸻

3. Benzothiazoles (e.g., 2-mercaptobenzothiazole) •Purpose: Vulcanization accelerators. •Danger: Toxic to aquatic organisms, possibly carcinogenic, and bioaccumulative. •Status: Found in tire leachate and considered a contaminant of emerging concern.

⸻

Nothing definitive about harm to human welfare yet, as far as I know.

mschuster917• 1 year ago

It's banned for new installs in Europe and existing installations have to be replaced by 2031 [1] - although primarily to get rid of a microplastics emission source. Additionally, shredded tire rubber as infill is investigated for being contaminated with PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) [2].

[1] https://www.hna.de/lokales/kreis-kassel/kreis-kassel-eu-verb...

[2] https://playground-landscape.com/de/article/2033-gesundheits...

apt-apt-apt-apt• 1 year ago

Man, similar story. Spent a few months next to a mall parking lot with rough asphalt. Apparently the neighborhood had a car drifting crowd, and they'd regularly do so, which made me irrationally angry.

I only realized later that all the black dust everywhere must have been tire particles, when I realized other places DON'T have the black dust. Given the toxicity of tire pollution, it doesn't seem like my reaction was irrational after all. Sucks for all the people that still live there, who may not even realize what's going on.

AnonymousPlanet• 1 year ago

This might actually be brake dust. In that case, the situation most likely will be improved by electric cars because they use their brakes far less often, decelerating with their motors.

dv_dt• 1 year ago

And it could be both tire dust and or brake dust are indicators of proximity to combustion engine exhaust. Any individual or combination of those could be an increased cancer risk. But only the dust is immediately visible and leaves behind a tangible trace

voxic11• 1 year ago

Breaks are only part of the problem unfortunately.

Resuspension of dust already on the road’s surface is the most significant contributor to non-exhaust PM by far, however these particles are difficult to characterize and manage because they could come from anywhere before landing on the road. Brakes are the next most significant source, and may also be particularly hazardous because of their small size and high metal content. Tires contribute the least, but they release large amounts of particles which act as microplastics in ecosystems.

https://www.nrdc.org/bio/john-bailey/beyond-tailpipe

MathMonkeyMan• 12 months ago

I've heard that regenerative braking helps, but the relatively higher mass of an electric car (because of the battery) hurts. I wonder how it adds up in terms of brake dust produced.

arevno• 1 year ago

The lungs are exposed to air, but they're also exposed to a lot of bloodborne compounds, since a full vascular cycle goes through the pulmonary arteries.

The null hypothesis is "it's something in the air", but with the increase in non-lung cancers in young people[1] noted over the past decade, it's entirely possible it's something else, and lung tissue is one of the susceptible ones to whatever it is.

[1] https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2025...

vel0city• 1 year ago

I don't doubt a significant portion was tire and brake dust, but even gasoline and diesel can emit a significant amount of soot and unburned hydrocarbons.

CGMthrowaway• 1 year ago

Tires and brake dust (yuck)

mathw2• 12 months ago

Yeah there's a lot of stuff comes off tyres, and EVs still have that. They also produce brake dust, although maybe less of it because of regenerative braking.

But they do have no tailpipe emissions, so they're still kicking out a lot less air pollution than a combustion-fuelled vehicle with not just the carbon dioxide but the myriad of pollutants which lower urban air quality so much.

Ultimately, a less dusty tyre would be a good thing, but the significant impact we can make now is to continue the EV transition knowing that like all solutions it's imperfect and we also need to use fewer vehicles and keep looking for better options.

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

Related from last year, similar asian women angle for whatever reason:

Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40161811

John23832• 1 year ago

Wok cooking is done at really high temp, which releases gases that are not present in moderate/low temp cooking. Woks trends asian, cooking trends towards women.

blindriver• 1 year ago

I don’t think you know young Asian American women if you think they are cooking with woks or even cooking in general.

resoluteteeth2• 1 year ago

I don't think most people are actually doing really high temp wok cooking at home regardless of ethnic background. My impression is that, while woks are more common for home cooking in china (not chinese americans, mind you), even there home cooking is usually not done at the high temperatures that restaurants use.

hulitu• 1 year ago

Many Lung Cancers Are Now in Nonsmokers. Scientists Want to Know Why

Because hypocrisy does not live long. They blamed cigarettes for lung cancer, ignoring all other causes. "Oh, you have cancer but didn't smoke ? You surely were inhaling cigarettes smoke from somebody else.". We can polute further with no repercursions.

polotics• 1 year ago

smokers thirds FYI: - one third dies a direct smoking related death - one third suffers from smoking related diseases then dies - one third dies of something else, younger than the other two

pessimizer• 1 year ago

They used to exaggerate the risks of cancer to smokers. Not many people get lung cancer at all, so 80% of them being smokers still doesn't represent that much risk for an individual smoker.

But like half of smokers ultimately end up with COPD, which can be like taking years to drown to death.

m2f2• 1 year ago

Non-paywall: https://archive.ph/nsMoH

Site is flagged as it hosts pedop. material.

andai• 1 year ago

The archive does what now?

irrational7• 1 year ago

The second leading cause of lung cancer is radon. My high schooler came home and said her science teacher said everyone should do a radon test. I scoffed, but humored her by getting a kit from Home Depot and sending it away to a lab. The results came back very high. So I purchased an electronic radon monitor and it showed almost the exact same results. Well, crap. I installed a radon mitigation system and now the numbers are almost nil.

Waterluvian6• 1 year ago

The difficult thing for me is that while I believe radon can cause lung cancer, I think products are often sold based on fear. “Second leading cause” doesn’t really mean anything in isolation, does it?

What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000? Could I spend $5000 to cut a bigger slice out of it in another way, like eating better or hiring a grizzly bear to make me exercise more often?

I think action is better than decision paralysis, but I wish I could make much more informed decisions.

irrational7• 1 year ago

$5000? I got a bunch of quotes and none came anywhere near that high and I live in a home that made it difficult to install the system (finished basement, large footprint, three stories tall, concrete outer walls (ICF), etc. I think the highest was $3,000 and the lowest $1,600. I ended up installing it myself for about $500 in materials.

pkaye• 1 year ago

Here is something I found comparing the risk of radon exposure to other risks. Seems like if you don't smoke the risks are much lower.

https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon

zamadatix8• 1 year ago

For 93% of people the only cost is the $15 test kit to verify "yep, don't need to even think about it".

For the other 7% that then need to really do a cost-benefit the data is out there but you do need to go through your specific circumstances to get a meaningful number. The risk levels vary vastly (orders of magnitudes) between both the radon level and your life choices/situation, so it's relatively meaningless to share individual cost-benefit analyses.

aorloff• 1 year ago

I might not be in as tight with the grizzlies, but $5k a year for a personal bear trainer seems a bit low. For a regular brown bear sure, but the grizzlies are expensive

ok_computer• 1 year ago

Radon fan drawing from two basement surfaces (concrete slab crawlspace addition and original stone foundation with cement floor): $1,200.00 usd in 2020 with warrantied fan and included confirmation test kit. US mid Atlantic. The prior homeowner thought radon was a scam too. It doesn’t make sense as a scam for a one-time capital and labor purchase.

necheffa• 12 months ago

What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000?

You'll never know. The same way people in the exclusion zone will never know if their thyroid cancer was always destined to be or if it really was related to the Chernobyl meltdown.

But spending (closer to $1000) to mitigate some risk from a known threat vector does seem thrifty.

furyofantares• 12 months ago

I'm with you on wanting to quantify.

https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon

Scroll down to "Radon Risk If You Have Never Smoked". Looks pretty worthwhile to take it from "very high" to "almost nil". If "very high" was in the range of the 2nd highest level listed here, that's 2% chance. That's for lifetime exposure but there's also multiple people living in the house.

If you DO smoke, the numbers look VERY good for spending some cash to get rid of radon. (Of course you should also stop smoking.)

devjab• 12 months ago

Radon gas is a pretty big thing in construction where I live since our underground is mainly boulder clay (which apparently has or leaks or whatever a lot of radon gas). Anyway, In Denmark a little over 5000 get lung cancer every year, and 300 of thouse are from radon gas. Acording to our Kræftens Bekæmpelse (anti-cancer NGO) there may be an additional 25% risk of radon causing lung cancer if you smoke.

Since around 2000, it's been part of building regulations that you gotta build air-gapped foundations in family homes. Those who can measure radon gas are adviced to buy things to fight it, and you can reduce it to basically 0% for little money.

I never really considered it from an advertisement perspective as it's adviced by our government and non-profit NGO's. So there is that, if that helps you.

safety1st2• 12 months ago

My approach is to think carefully about exactly what I want to know, word the question that way, then throw it to the AI and pray. I think this is better than ignoring it or spending too much time on it.

Question: Where does radon related mortality rank versus other mortality factors in the United States?

...

Summary: Radon in perspective

Category / Cause Approx. Deaths per Year (U.S.) Rank / Context

Heart disease ~680,000 #1 overall cause of death

Cancer (all causes) ~613,000 #2 overall cause

Chronic lower respiratory disease ~145,000 #5 overall (includes COPD, etc.)

Lung cancer due to radon ~20,000–21,000

Subset of cancer deaths; about 3–4%

Toxic agents (inc. radon, pollutants) ~55,000 ~2.3% of all deaths (includes radon part)

So AI says it's a bit less than 1% of preventable deaths (or something) annually. Probably puts it in the top 150 causes or so. What you want to do with that hypothesis, or whether you want to spend time sanity checking it, is up to you. Hitting the gym to avoid heart disease is like 35 times more important. A radon home testing kit to eliminate uncertainty about this particular <1% risk is a one time cheap thing though.

falcor84• 12 months ago

I was actually thinking of getting one too. Is there a particular Grizzly-as-a-service offering that you recommend? I'm also considering signing up for Ostrich-as-a-service, and am really struggling with this decision.

wvh• 12 months ago

I reckon grizzly bears have negative health side effects too... It's all a fine balancing act.

reverendsteveii• 12 months ago

what's stopping you from getting answers for these questions?

londons_explore• 12 months ago

What slice of my mortality pie was radon before and after spending $5000? Could I spend $5000 to cut a bigger slice out of it in another way, like eating better or hiring a grizzly bear to make me exercise more often?

I wish more people thought like this. Every time I go to the GP I want to get a printout of my mortality pie based on everything they know about me.

barbazoo• 1 year ago

Folks, check out your local library, ours has radon test devices.

YZF• 1 year ago

Same (Canada).

Ancalagon• 1 year ago

I am super uneducated on this, but I thought radon was only a concern for people with brick homes or basements?

johncolanduoni• 1 year ago

It has more to do with the land you’re built on, though basements make it worse.

jchw2• 12 months ago

I have a brick house and a basement, and I have no radon mitigation system, and I live in an area where radon is generally a concern (southeast Michigan.)

Over the last couple years I've had some AirThings sensors collecting data. Last month:

- The one-day average radon concentration detected by the basement sensor crossed over 3 pCi/L once... for a very brief period. Around 80% of the time, the one-day average radon concentration detected by the basement sensor was below 2 pCi/L.

- The one-day average radon concentration detected by the main floor sensor never reached 3 pCi/L and was rarely above 2 pCi/L.

In fact, since January, the main floor sensor has still never reached 3 pCi/L even once, or really gotten all that close. The basement sensor, on the other hand, has reached 4 pCi/L three times this year, with a peak at 5.1 pCi/L for a brief period in May.

I hardly ever check this data, but it is nice to have it. I guess it would probably be wise to double check some other way to make sure that the AirThings sensors are outputting good information, but I have little reason to doubt it.

As long as I'm interpreting the data right, though, it suggests that despite having some of the worst case scenarios for my house, actually it's fine. So I guess it really does depend mostly on the land you're built on. (That, and, you should probably just check instead of guessing.)

gerdesj2• 1 year ago

"The second leading cause of lung cancer is radon"

Perhaps. I smoked for 30 years and I lived on and off in Devon for at least 15 years.

There is a bloody great pluton underneath Dartmoor in Devon and Bodmin in Cornwall and so on. Hence lots of lovely granite and radon and stuff.

This is the SW of England (UK). Radon emanates out of the earth and pools in cellars and the like and is a major health hazard. Ideally you know about the hazard and dissipate it. A simple fan will do the job.

I'm not sure it is the second leading cause of lung cancer. There are plenty of other pollutants to worry about.

SubiculumCode3• 12 months ago

My daughter wanted to live in the basement area, so I had it tested for radon even though I guess radon is less common where I live. It came back negative, so I feel okay about it...man, the things you need to remember to think about in life.

madaxe_again3• 12 months ago

I’d argue that the leading cause is actually genetics. I come from a long line of people who smoked like chimneys from their teens until their 90s, with no cancers. My mother has spent her life in harsh sun with no sunscreen, and looks like an old handbag, but has entirely clear skin - but her partner, who wears strong sunblock, hats, and all the rest, has had skin cancer twice. So have two of his kids.

Meanwhile, my father’s second wife’s family have pretty much all had or succumbed to lung cancer. None of them smoke, and unless they all coincidentally chose radon-riddled homes in different corners of the U.S., there’s no correlative environmental cause - which leaves genetics.

menaerus4• 12 months ago

And you base your conclusion on top of the sample size of what, N=10?

csomar• 12 months ago

Is it genetics or probability distribution? If it is genetics, shouldn't the native american be the most immune to smoking? (genuinely asking if there is such a data)

7bit• 12 months ago

Although there are over 50 identifiable hereditary forms of cancer, less than 0.3% of the population are carriers of a cancer-related genetic mutation and these make up less than 3–10% of all cancer cases.[

Took me 5 seconds of research. But keep arguing. Opinions are more important than facts.

kensai12• 12 months ago

I think Radon exposure is a serious matter, but its concentration in the USA either is probably overrated OR indeed you have a local geological problem. In Europe we even have the tradition of Radon Therapy for certain pathologies in Spa. Of course, one should do these therapies under medical consultation.

https://www.alpentherme.com/en/therapy-health/therapy/radon-...

MengerSponge• 12 months ago

In the early 20th century America also used to have lots of radiation therapy providers. It's quackery, and harmful quackery at that.

Just because you have a tradition of something doesn't mean it's effective. Or safe. Or wise.

infecto12• 12 months ago

Absolutely bunk science with no real evidence supporting. It’s like saying autism is created from vaccines.

A lot of the US has radon exposure. I don’t how people come out saying things like you do but at the end of the day it’s exposure to radiation. I have seen it all, people will say it only impacts children or the elderly. Or that it’s an overblown conspiracy. Radon is radioactive, I am sure there are discussions on safe exposure levels but mitigation is so inexpensive and normalized why risk it.

ImPostingOnHN6• 12 months ago

How radon works: Cellular repair in the body is stimulated, the number of free radicals is reduced.

Yikes! Not only are free radicals increased, because you're being bombarded with ionizing radiation, but any cellular repair stimulated is because of the cellular damage done!*

I have to assume "the number of free radicals is reduced" is intentionally written awkwardly and in a passive voice, to avoid adding "...after the "radon therapy" stops.

* - And it's not gonna be a net positive!

boringg• 12 months ago

So what is the necessary levels of exposure to have some kind of long term implications? With hand wavy claims to drive fear that certainly will make a pump in radon kits + drive more radon mitigation systems.

I've always been under the impression that there was radon in basements since it settles down there ... maybe the correlation is people who spend long periods of time in the basement with radon exposure (thats a guess fwiw).

Karawebnetwork• 12 months ago

Canada has a great website about radon:

https://www.canada.ca/radon

https://takeactiononradon.ca/

TurkishPoptart• 12 months ago

What's a radon mitigation system like?

dontreact• 1 year ago

Lung cancer screening should be used more broadly and improved over time in a data driven fashion!

We can catch things early, it shouldn’t be limited to only for smokers.

userbinator2• 1 year ago

Among certain groups of Asian and Asian American women, that share is estimated to be 50 percent or more.

I suspect certain perfumes may be causing it.

diziet_sma• 12 months ago

Or perhaps cooking? Cooking can really spike AQI if ventilation is suboptimal.

Another potential explanation is cleaning products.

I think these are both far more likely than perfume, as there is a much stronger link between AQI and lung cancer than perfume and lung cancer (if there is any at all).

userbinator2• 12 months ago

Professional chefs are largely not Asian women, and cook a lot more. Has there been a similar trend in them?

Cleaning products is a possibility.

Incense is another one --- those who burn incense may not consider it smoking, but any burning plant matter is going to emit similar products of combustion.

Huxley1• 12 months ago

This challenges our previous understanding of lung cancer risks, since we’ve always thought it mostly affected smokers. I’m curious how much is due to environmental pollution or other exposures, and how much is genetic. Hopefully, this will push for more research and better screening methods for everyone.

bena• 12 months ago

Not necessarily. Smoking has become less prevalent.

So while before, most lung cancer victims were smokers, we’re at the point where overall risk in the general population causes higher numbers than specific risk in smokers.

Because while most lung cancer victims were smokers, most smokers never got lung cancer.

jajko5• 12 months ago

Its not only lung cancer you can get, but others also have elevated risks. My uncle who smoked a pack a day never had any lung issues, but developed lymphatic node cancer in the groin area (and died from heart attack in his 50s, while both his parents lived till 80s in pretty good health but those never smoked).

Fairly typical fate for heavier smokers around.

jader201• 12 months ago

Dropping at the root since some threads are talking about radon and whether it’s based on region.

This is the EPA map for radon risks (zones) in the US:

https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-05/radon-zon...

ezekiel68• 12 months ago

I'm not sure why this isn't recognized as a great success.

Once a large enough portion of the population were no longer smokers, it was inevitable that many lung cancers would be in smokers. What is important in all of this is not "large sounding numbers" of people, but the percentage of the population, as a whole, who suffer from lung cancer. And a further confounding factor life expectancy today vs even 30 years ago (the longer one lives, the more likely it is for cancer of any kind to develop).

aetherspawn2• 12 months ago

I can think of a few hypothesis, but I’d hit all the reasons we already know that people in their 30s are getting cancer first, like:

Natural gas burning inside with poor ventilation (solve by pushing electric everything, paid for by carbon tax paid by big oil)

ICE car exhaust (solve with EVs, subsidised by carbon tax paid by big oil)

Second hand smoke (ban smoking in public and within XX distance of a child, and make support for parents to quit free from cigarette taxes)

Microplastics in the water and the air including tyre dust (start regulating this/coming up with a long term plan to reduce it and filter it out, and put a government subsidy on certified and professionally installed under sink microplastic water filter products… paid for by those who put the plastic there in the first place)

Poor indoor air quality/high VOX (mandate air flow minimum levels for all new builds and make extraction fans for offices a normal requirement, and give tenants something to lobby against their body corporate to improve airflow in uselessly designed buildings since “sick building syndrome” is real but often impossible to know before you sign the papers)

lordofgibbons• 12 months ago

But all of these factors have been around for many decades, why is it showing up now?

ojosilva• 12 months ago

Because smoking is down, and with it, smoking-related lung cancer. Nonsmoker lung cancer numbers OTOH remain steady and its percentage is therefore higher.

aetherspawn2• 12 months ago

These cause cancer after many decades so for example people who were 10 when this started becoming a big issue are now getting cancer in their 30s and 40s.

This is a professional medical opinion from scientists that was aired on the news recently in Australia.

Cancers in the 30s, all types, are waaay up.

0xDEAFBEAD• 12 months ago

Studies have also shown that people who don’t smoke but have a family history of lung cancer, such as Ms. Chen and Ms. Liu — both of Ms. Liu’s grandfathers had the disease — are at increased risk. This could be because of shared genetics, a common environment or both, said Dr. Jae Kim, chief of thoracic surgery at City of Hope in Duarte, Calif.

Couldn't this be secondhand smoke?

owenversteeg4• 12 months ago

I think a large contributor is poor indoor air quality - of all types, not just one specific pollutant - causing inflammation and thus cancer. Homes have gotten far tighter in recent years, and people buy ever more cheap furniture and inexpensive consumer products. So you have formaldehyde and other VOCs off-gassing, you have plasticizer vapors, nanoplastics in the air from synthetic furniture and cloth, you have refrigerants leaking from appliances and from insulation foam… I don’t think nearly anyone understands just how many unique poorly-studied chemicals are emitted into your indoor air by your average set of household products. That’s all to say nothing of common and better-understood air quality issues from gas cooking, radon, mold, etc.

So we have all these irritants in the air, and we have the most airtight homes in human history by orders of magnitude… what did we think was going to happen? That you could slap a laughably undersized carbon filter on an air purifier and call it good? Or that a limited number of too-small ERV systems would help? At some point we will need a radical rethinking of our approach to health and safety of new technology.

seanmcdirmid• 12 months ago

Houses weren’t so much better, but people are living in those houses longer (well, that’s true about all cancers). Perhaps one reason California life expectancy is better than other states is that they can mostly keep their windows open year round.

Quarrel• 12 months ago

Why do you think this?

There is an entire article linked here, saying that they, Scientists, don't know what the causes are, even though they're actively trying to search for a cause.

xnorswap2• 12 months ago

HN can be infuriating sometimes.

Imagine if there was an environmental science forum that sat around pontificating with mistrust about software performance. Chances are people would mock it and marvel at their ignorance.

But here we have a forum of (largely) software developers looking at the experts on environmental health and going, "Why are they so stupid? It's obviously <radon> <modern junk> <etc>".

It's not limited to environmental health, it affects all kinds of articles on social sciences. Commentary full of people who aren't domain experts wondering why the domain experts are all so clueless because Mr Software Engineer has it all figured out.

owenversteeg4• 12 months ago

So, first of all, trusting the NYT - or most major newspapers - on any article involving “science” is… somewhere between delusional and hilarious. They get things wrong at roughly the same frequency as a Facebook meme page.

Secondly: “Scientists” are not some monolithic group. On any subject you can imagine there are scientists claiming they know all, some claiming we know nothing, some with hypothesis A and some with B and some with Z.

Finally… I outlined a reasonable mechanism in my comment (indoor air pollutants increasing by orders of magnitude; home air tightness increasing by orders of magnitude; many of these pollutants are known to increase the risk of lung cancer.) Why not debate the argument itself, instead of making appeals to authority?

HocusLocus2• 12 months ago

It was Jimmy Carter days and the OPEC Oil crisis. Prior to 1973... electricity and heating oil was cheap, there were many single pane windows that didn't seal completely. So the default condition was houses as originally built, cooler temps in Winter and more natural ventilation in houses with corresponding higher energy costs.

In 1973 fears that heating in Winter would get more expensive, saw an increase in home renovation. IR viewers were employed for the first time and IR images showed windows and attic vents as glowing with heat (as they had all along) and it looked like money escaping. Rubber seals on doors and windows. Double pane windows.

This trapped the radon in basements (and for some rising out of the basement onto the first floor) to be breathed by humans and gain higher concentrations for the first time in US history. Homes were hermetically sealed.

Since smokers bore the penance of sin... the rise of the '2nd leading cause' went unrecognized for years.

seszett• 12 months ago

Radon is measurable, my CO2 detector also mesures radon. There is none in my well-insulated house.

Now in a basement in Brittany things would be different, but for most houses in most places, radon is negligible.

There also isn't a notable difference in cancers between radon-rich granitic places like Brittany and the rest of France. I feel like at least in France, the potential dangers of radon are well known.

pmezard• 12 months ago

And well communicated, I was surprised to have a full section about this when I changed home last year in Brest.

SubiculumCode3• 12 months ago

When I finally got to buy a home, we chose one built in the fourties because we really didn't like the feel of newer homes. Love it, but yeah, plenty drafty..erm I mean, fresh air. I do have to worry about lead paint though, which I found out with a cabinet remake.

HocusLocus2• 12 months ago

Seeing a toddler licking lead paint makes you shudder to think about it. Smart moms renovate before the kids are born and use peanut butter paint.

elric4• 12 months ago

It always struck me as odd that radon in basements seems to be a big thing in North America, but is relatively un(der)reported of elsewhere. Is this just a matter of the US being too cautious? Is there perhaps more radon in basements over there? Or does the rest of the world not give a shit for some reason?

SiempreViernes• 12 months ago

I don't know about "rest of the world", but I think in western Europe it is simply just another thing that gets inspected uneventfully, like making sure there is a fuse box.

messe• 12 months ago

Radon in houses is certainly a thing in Ireland where I grew up, it's somewhat rare though. I don't know anybody who has a basement.

Same in Denmark where I'm living now, I know nobody whose house has a basement.

mprovost• 12 months ago

I expect that Americans spend more time in their basements than people in most other countries (other than Canada). The kind of furnished basement that teenagers hang out in from That 70's Show isn't common elsewhere.

mathw2• 12 months ago

It's definitely a thing in parts of the UK - it's to do with what the ground is made of.

xorcist• 12 months ago

It depends on which type of ground you build on. The Nordics are mostly granite and have a relatively big problem with radon gas, or at least enough that people in general care about it. Continental Europe is dominated by limestome which hasn't got the same problem.

snarf21• 12 months ago

This is also making things worse for houses with water damage and mold issues for the same reasons. The concentrations can rise rapidly as there is no dilution effect from leaks or open windows (most houses are always closed up in today's lifestyle).

samus2• 12 months ago

Properly built houses should have a central ventilation system though.

insane_dreamer• 12 months ago

This depends very much on the soil composition. Some areas might have almost no radon, whereas others do. Here's a high-level view of radon probably by county (WA state), but you can find local maps that show it at the neighborhood level. We looked at the maps when buying our house, had it tested, and radon levels were high so we installed a mitigation system in our garage (which is the bottom level of our house).

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-08/documents/wa...

floppiplopp• 12 months ago

Whatever the causes, be it cars, industry, certain classes of chemicals and particles, there will be a vicious fight about regulating them, since the ideological divisions are now drawn along the lines of anti-cancer and pro-cancer politics.

elric4• 12 months ago

Give it a few more years, vapes will boost those numbers again.

I wish I was joking. But I'm not. I'm seeing 12 year olds with vapes quite regularly. They're so addicted, taking sneaky hits on the bus or on the train. Even when smoking was cool back when I was a kid, I didn't know of anyone that young who was that addicted.

simmerup• 12 months ago

Vapes are ridiculous, theyre marketed in the UK as being incredibly safe. But they mess with my body so much whenever I’ve used them I just don’t believe it.

skeezyboy3• 12 months ago

overlooked fact i point out is that the carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke makes you nauseas and puts an upper bound on your possible hourly intake of nicotine, whereas vapes dont contain the CO, and actually taste good enough to drink... you end up taking magnitudes more nicotine than the traditional route

piombisallow• 12 months ago

Nicotine by itself doesn't cause cancer.

jcattle• 12 months ago

I love that the article mainly points out that it is unknown why asian women have an unusually high rate of lung cancer but the entire HN comment section (except for 1 thread) is just going on about radon.

storus• 12 months ago

Could this come from the hypothesis that covid could be oncogenic?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10202899/

uwagar• 12 months ago

guess the anti-vaxxers had a point.

Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

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