Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution

Scientists have discovered how air pollution can cause lung cancer.

The findings show how fine particulates in car fumes can cause lung cells to die and lead to cancer. The work shows how pollution can cause lung cancer and is a wake-up call about how pollution can affect human health.

According to Prof Charles Swanton of the Francis Crick Institute, the risk of lung cancer from air pollution is lower than from smoking.

More people are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution than to toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke, and these new data show the importance of addressing climate health to improve human health.

Smoking remains the leading cause of lung cancer, but outdoor air pollution causes about one in 10 cases in the UK and an estimated 6,000 people who have never smoked die of lung cancer every year. About 300,000 lung cancer deaths were attributed to exposure to fine particulate matter.

The biological basis for how air pollution causes cancer isn't clear. Air pollution does not cause cancer because it does not cause genetic changes.

Those with non-smoking lung cancer are more likely to have small errors in their genes that are seen in healthy lung tissue.

Swanton, who is also Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, said that there needs to be something else going on. Air pollution is linked to lung cancer but people don't pay much attention to it.

This mechanism was revealed through a series of intricate experiments that showed that cells carrying dormant genes can turn into cancer when exposed to PM 2.5 particles. The pollutant is similar to a spark on a gas stove.

In laboratory studies, Swanton's team showed that mice that had been engineered to carry a certain type of cancer-causing genes were more likely to develop the disease. They discovered that the risk is caused by an inflammatoryProtein calledIL1B that is released as part of the body's immune response to PM 2.5 exposure. The mice were less vulnerable when they were given drugs.

There was a previous finding in a clinical trial of a heart disease drug that people on the drug had a reduction in lung cancer incidence. Swanton said that this could lead to a new wave of cancer-prevention medicines.

One in five of the normal lung samples were analysed by the team and found that the EGFR was present. Chronic exposure to air pollution increases the odds that our cells will turn into cancer, and this suggests that we all carry genes that could make us sick.

Swanton said it was a wake-up call on the impact of pollution. Climate health can't be ignored. Climate health is the first thing you need to address human health.

The death of a nine-year-old girl due to air pollution was attributed by a coroner to illegal levels of pollution. She said that unless you clear up the air, more and more people will get sick. There are nine million premature deaths caused by air pollution every year, but no one is held responsible.

Prof Tony Mok, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and who was not involved in the research, said that they now have a possible explanation for the link between pollution and lung cancer. As consumption of fossil fuels goes hand in hand with pollution and carbon emissions, we have a strong mandate to tackle these issues.

The findings have implications for our understanding of how smoking causes cancer. There are a lot of substances in cigarette smoke. He said that this has been known for a long time but has been ignored. The cancer risk is going to go away because the tobacco companies are now saying that smokers should switch to e-cigs. There is evidence that vaping can cause lung disease and inflammation similar to the promoter, so this isn't true.