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Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
111–120 of 161 posts
Re: Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what it means, and the graph is unclear, is that of the A-A women who developed lung cancer, 53% don't smoke. It's P(non-smoking | lung cancer, ethnicity)
I think your interpretation is correct, but I'm not convinced it's just a matter of ambiguity. It looks to me like the caption on the graph is stating something that simply isn't true.
You're right on the graph. The graph in the article is very misleading, especially the N=4000 non-smokers.
If you look the table in the source paper, 53.4% of 296 Asian American Female (Single Group) lung-cancer patients are non-smokers.
Also, share of lung-cancer patients being non-smoker vs. smoker being higher in Asian american females, does not necessarily mean they're more likely to get lung-cancer. This assumes the non-smoking vs. smoking population is the same in teh general population, which it isn't.
Re: Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
#113I am sure this inevitably is going to blame Asian cooking, but one important factor here is that the women surveyed were 40-70 year old. It is important, because a huge portion of these women would be first generation immigrants. That is important to know because first generation immigrants from decades ago are more likely to have a lower socioeconomic living conditions. Life in Asia with higher pollution and lower s…
It’s still strange. It’s not like Asian women in America are cooking on wood fire stoves.
Re: Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm assuming they are referring to "traditional old Asian culture" aka the combination of old patriarchal/sexist beliefs, a toxic workplace/exploitation culture, society-over-individual attitudes, and that topped up with a healthy dose of racism to xenophobia (depending on the country). I mean, some of this is rich to talk about given I'm European and most Western countries share a lot of these traits, but from what…
Individualism in western countries varies quite a bit. In cross-country scores, Spain has numbers far closer to the middle east than to the US, and then Peru is closer to China than to Spain! So your invdidualism argument is only strong if by western, you mean the anglosphere, the Netherlands and Belgium.
This is indeed surprising. What's the source?
Re: Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
#115My wife is Thai, we now live in Australia.
Back in Thailand she and her mother often used coal for cooking (which is listed in the article as a possible cause) but after moving to Australia, she no longer used it because it is impractical (the coal is hard to find, the type of stove used for cooking with coal is not readily available, neighbours would complain about the smoke, etc etc).
I imagine that most other Asian women who migrated to Western countries face a similar situation and no longer use coal on a daily basis.
Also, I am sceptical that cooking oils could be a factor, it seems to me that, at least in the parts of Asia where I have lived, the types of cooking oils used are similar to the ones used in the West. I have seen the comments about mustard oil but its usage seems to be limited to certain countries or regions and not widespread everywhere in Asia, whereas according to the article, the issue affects women from various countries from India to China.
EDIT - however some of the comments indicate that other oils, not just mustard oil, also present similar health challenges and they are widely used in several Asian cooking traditions.
Re: Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
#116I have a bizarre theory that 1 - 1.5 packs of cigarettes per year is actually beneficial for health. This theory has two parts: - small amounts of nicotine occsaionnaly are excellent for the brain - the innoculatory effects of small occasional acute exposure to toxins and carcinogens preemptively activates and trains your body and its immune system to respond to the types of things that cause damage. Basically by act…
I have a similar theory about car accidents. I get in one every couple of years because I think that I'll be able react more quickly to them if I'd never experienced it at all. :-). Slightly more seriously, I hope your cigarette plan works out for you.
Exactly, or like allowing your kid occasional exposure to allergens hoping it will help them avoid allergies and asthma later on.
In reality of course, no amount of cleanliness could possibly be too clean.
Re: Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
#117should not be on Hacker News
Re: Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
east asians don't use mustard oil
Notice how I said SOUTH, and how the article notes the same issue in Indian Americans
but the article explains that the issue affects women from several different Asian American backgrounds, not just Indian Americans
Edit - however sibling comment seems to indicate that East Asians use Rapeseed Oil which presents similar issues, so you might be onto something
Re: Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
#119Wasn't there something about some seed oil fumes being toxic? Maybe it's related to some cooking practices. Highly speculative but the cooking oil toxicity is well-known. [edit] found this with a quick search, seems relevant: Exposure to Cooking Oil Fumes and Oxidative Damages: A Longitudinal Study in Chinese Military Cooks https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4029104/ [edit 2] and indeed the article mentions…
Very empirical, but earlier this year I was talking to a Thai street food cook who mentioned he was scared of getting cancer from the cooking fumes, because he knew many people who were also cooks and got ill.
s/empirical/anecdotal/
Re: Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is saying that 53.4% of the non smoking women that developed cancer in the study were Asian. It is a dumb stat to chart without contextualizing that Asians were 15.92% of the entire study population. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8530225/table/T...
My interpretation of the underlying study is that 53.4% of the asian women who developed cancer in the study were nonsmokers, which I believe is subtly different from what you said. But I think what NBC wrote on the graph is pretty unambiguous, that 53.4% of nonsmoking asian women in the study developed cancer. They titled the graph "Lung cancer among nonsmokers, by race" when it should really be "Nonsmoking among Lu…
It's a lost cause. No one labels charts correctly when presenting complex conditionals breakdowns. It's impossible to cram the proper grammar into the brief titles.