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Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

nytimes.com

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Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#231

Post by kelnos »

dathinab wrote: post #227
devjab wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> and you can reduce it to basically 0% for little money. which is why I'm confused by people second questioning how bad it actually is in context of _fixing_ it (not in context of a national health scope) if there is something which is known to be quite unhealthy in a non small degree, and there is a cheap fix why wouldn't you just fix it. In the end if it's very bad, or slightly less bad or the 10th leading cause i…

Is radon mitigation affordable, though? Someone in another subthread said they got quotes between $1600 and $3000. Even the low end of that is a difficult amount to spend for a lot of people in the US. If they're going to spend it (if they even can), they're going to want to know it's going to meaningfully decrease their risk of cancer.

I'm not saying it's not worth it -- that's the point, I don't know -- but I agree with people upthread that it would be nice to have better information with which to make decisions.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#232

Post by dathinab »

zamadatix wrote: post #96
Waterluvian wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

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 s…

> so it's relatively meaningless to share individual cost-benefit analyses.

yes

1. it's very affordable to fix

2. long term exposure always adds a non negligible risk

so just fix it

I'm confused why people get hung up on a cost-benefit analysis which is pretty much always guaranteed to be a net positive. Either slightly or majorly.

And if it's a rented apartment in many countries you can force your land lord to fix it with a wide arsenal of funny things you can do if they try to refuse :shrug:

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#233

Post by 7bit »

madaxe_again wrote: post #202
irrational wrote: post #80

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 num…

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, m…

> 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.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#234

Post by jajko »

RajT88 wrote: post #15
codyb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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)

I don't think you get it. And also this is an universal response from all women I ever talked about exactly this topic (and several guys too who had no idea about cars in general but knew about those famous football players or other celebrities who had suvs so they also needed one).

The root cause is plain and simple - your wife just needs to learn to drive better, then she wouldn't be scared regardless of her seating position. No amount of high position can compensate for overall crappy driving style and corresponding fear of driving and thus the 'need' for high SUVs. To keep her distance from car in front of her (which is basically why she feels the need to be sitting so high so she can anticipate braking earlier), and quick reflexes on the brake while 100% focusing on situation around her (which she should have anyway since there are other bad situations where higher positions doesn't give any advantage, in contrary).

I went the other way - very low-positioned bmws, with correspondingly much better and quicker handling, of course much lower consumption and much more rolling resistance. Its wagon so trunk space is massive and if not enough I can put on biggest Thule roof rack and still fit in our garage and low entry points like store garages (1.9m is the limit with it, never saw entry limiter lower than that). My wife learned to drive properly over time and has exactly same opinion, aka suv never ever because why.

Suvs and variants, at least those who don't go offroad (so most of them) should be reserved for physically challenged people due to easier entry/exit to/from vehicle. And that's about it for real objective advantages, the rest are just emotions which adults should manage to their advantage, not the opposite.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#235

Post by dathinab »

pjc50 wrote: post #201
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advice also applies to mold. A lot of people worry about mold in their house. It's actually quite straightforward to determine if this is actually a problem: Home Depot sells "test kits" for a few bucks that are essentially petri dishes. Buy two of these, put one inside where you are worried and then the other outside and wait 3-4 days. If they look radically different, then send the inside one in for actual analysis…

Is it common to have an invisible mould problem? Lots of people are in the situation where there is really visible mould but the problem is getting their landlord to fix it, without getting into allegations over drying clothes inside etc.

honesty depending where you are such allegations might be very baseless & meaningless for many reasons like

- high base humidity of the place (e.g. the city where I live has a yearly avg. humidity of 70%, but specific to my apartment and ignoring the dry seasons over 80% is the norm (also for context not tropical but central EU, it's stuff like 20C+85% humidity). So airing out your room might increase air humidity...

- in small apartments it's the quite often norm that the side effect of taking a show can temporary rise humidity quite a bit, even if you ventilate properly. Most bathrooms in small appartments are just not well designed wrt. this (context I'm not speaking about long hot showers, but short normal warm showers).

- in small bed rooms night sweat can rise humidity by quite a lot, mostly if you are slightly sick but anyway

- just basic flowers can raise humidity, too

excluding dry areas IMHO for most no large apartments the landlord has forsaken any right to claim it's your fault if they don't provide reasonable measurements against humidity (even if it's just a half way decent (noise wise) air humidifier. Reason: Just standard normal expected usage will cause to high humidity level even if you do air out the apartment twice a day (which depending on weather conditions you might not even be able to do)

Sadly that isn't necessary the local laws/regulations POV.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#236

Post by jajko »

bena wrote: post #158
Huxley1 wrote: post #146

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.

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.

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.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#237

Post by dathinab »

lostlogin wrote: post #211
dmurray wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One cigarette a day doesn't sound that bad for you. 40-a-day smokers exist and while they're unhealthy, they're not universally dying in their fifties, so one fortieth of that effect seems small. The biggest risk of smoking one cigarette a day is not that it will give you cancer, it's that it will give you nicotine addiction which will lead to smoking twenty a day and getting cancer. Radon exposure doesn't have that…

Cancer isn’t the only risk though, the 100 other things are pretty bad too. It isn’t ‘just’ that you might die of cancer, it’s the decades of leg ulcers, stroke, heart and lung disease etc.

yes cancer is only one of the more deadly and more reliably attributable to cigarettes things

there are quite many things made much more likely with smoking which would end very deadly but modern medicine has learned to to move into the non deadly if treated in time area, which doesn't mean it it doesn't leaves you with long lasting side effects...

like most cases in my environment of smokers having "likely smoking caused" issues fall under that category (so far, aging/time tends to let you see more death in your environment and I'm not yet that old)

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#238

Post by samus »

kelnos wrote: post #231
dathinab wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you can reduce it to basically 0% for little money. which is why I'm confused by people second questioning how bad it actually is in context of _fixing_ it (not in context of a national health scope) if there is something which is known to be quite unhealthy in a non small degree, and there is a cheap fix why wouldn't you just fix it. In the end if it's very bad, or slightly less bad or the 10th leading cause i…

Is radon mitigation affordable, though? Someone in another subthread said they got quotes between $1600 and $3000. Even the low end of that is a difficult amount to spend for a lot of people in the US. If they're going to spend it (if they even can ), they're going to want to know it's going to meaningfully decrease their risk of cancer. I'm not saying it's not worth it -- that's the point, I don't know -- but I agre…

It might be significantly cheaper if installed in new buildings. Even if not, it barely moves the needle compared to the total cost of building a house, and it's almost nothing spread across the lifetime of a typical building.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#239

Post by dathinab »

jajko wrote: post #218
dmurray wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One cigarette a day doesn't sound that bad for you. 40-a-day smokers exist and while they're unhealthy, they're not universally dying in their fifties, so one fortieth of that effect seems small. The biggest risk of smoking one cigarette a day is not that it will give you cancer, it's that it will give you nicotine addiction which will lead to smoking twenty a day and getting cancer. Radon exposure doesn't have that…

Those are some powerful claims, do you have any links for that? Generally 2-pack smokers that started early ie in their 20s or even earlier don't live till retirement where I live, but I agree its a small sample and generally such people don't live a healthy life overall.

> people don't live a healthy life overall.

to some degree that is exactly the thing

by smoking you add a risk

and the more ways you add risk through your live the more likely you will die an early death

it's just basic statistics

and for the same reason you will find someone who does add all the risks but somehow still dies with 90+, if your sample size is large enough and factors complicated enough you are pretty much guaranteed to find some pretty big outliers

but realistically speaking it a pretty bad idea to assume you are such an outlier, but many people tend to ("basically") do exactly that (due to an combination of subconsciously avoiding reality and simply not thinking things through)

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#240

Post by dmurray »

jajko wrote: post #218
dmurray wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One cigarette a day doesn't sound that bad for you. 40-a-day smokers exist and while they're unhealthy, they're not universally dying in their fifties, so one fortieth of that effect seems small. The biggest risk of smoking one cigarette a day is not that it will give you cancer, it's that it will give you nicotine addiction which will lead to smoking twenty a day and getting cancer. Radon exposure doesn't have that…

Those are some powerful claims, do you have any links for that? Generally 2-pack smokers that started early ie in their 20s or even earlier don't live till retirement where I live, but I agree its a small sample and generally such people don't live a healthy life overall.

A couple of sources putting the life expectancy cost at 10-20 minutes per cigarette.

Smoking for 40 years that would be 5 months at 1 a day or 17 years at 40 a day.

I think that's all consistent with what you said: 2 packs a day and you usually, but by no means always, don't make it to retirement at ~66. Five months is enough that I'd take some care to avoid it, though.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1117323/

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/30/single-cigar...

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