It came as a shock to some that Joe Paterno died of lung cancer even though he never puffed on a cigarette. Lung cancer, which kills more Americans than all other cancers combined, is widely considered a smoker’s disease. But experts say it is a major killer even among people who have never used tobacco.
“About 15 to 20 percent of men who get lung cancer are nonsmokers and that can be up to 50 percent for women,” Eduardo Oliveira, head of interventional pulmonology and chief of medicine at Cleveland Clinic Florida, told Newsmax Health. In all, lung cancer causes about 150,000 American deaths a year. As many as 24,000 of those victims never smoked.
While lung cancer caused by smoking has decreased over the years, the toll from non-tobacco lung cancer has held steady.
“It appears to have stayed exactly the same since the 1960s,” says Michael Thun, M.D., the American Cancer Society’s vice president of epidemiology and surveillance. Still, the numbers do create a paradox, he says, because while lung cancer in nonsmokers is considered “very rare” by official definition, “There is still a substantial burden of lung cancer disease in people who have never smoked, so much that it ranks among the 10 top causes of cancer death,” he said.
Dr. Thun also noted that, although the percentage of women nonsmokers who develop lung cancer appears high, he believes this is because lung cancer develops in older people and women live longer. Also, the number of women who never smoked is significantly higher than men.
According to Dr. Oliveira, the most common reasons nonsmokers develop lung cancer are these:
• Radon gas, which is naturally present in homes in some parts of the country.
• Second-hand smoke.
• Exposure to asbestos.
• Air pollutants.
• Cooking fumes, especially in Asian countries, where woks are used in poorly ventilated households.
• Genetics.
Dr. Thun says that marijuana smoke and incense may also cause some cases of lung cancer. “Our lungs were just not meant to inhale smoke,” he said.
To lower your risk of nonsmoking lung cancer, limit your exposure to the factors above, although there is nothing you can do if lung cancer runs in your family. Dr. Thun says that screening tests to catch lung cancer early are generally not effective.
Says Dr. Oliveira: “Some people decide to obtain CAT scans and pay for it because they want to remove uncertainty, but the problem is that they are unlikely to find anything and the rate of false positives is very high. So they get no relief, and they may have to follow up with biopsies, or tests with still more radiation, so we don’t recommend them.”
Radon gas is the second-leading cause of lung cancer behind smoking, according to the National Cancer Institute. You can have your home tested for radon, and if levels are high, ventilation and other steps can be taken to lower them.
Radon gas may have been the cause of Paterno's cancer, since Pennsylvania is considered a hotspot for the radioactive contaminant. The state is second in the nation for radon-caused deaths behind California.
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