Live data from Hacker News

Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

nytimes.com

291–300 of 361 posts

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#291
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This point always amuses me. Thats like, 1 starbucks coffee a month, or 1 trip to a fast food place a month, or one extra thing at the grocery store a month, or half a movie ticket a month, or half a streaming service a month, or less than half an LLM subscription a month, I could go on for a while. For the cost, preventing cancer seems like it's a wise investment. I say this as a cancer survivor.

But it doesn’t prevent cancer. It lowers the risk of a specific kind of cancer by some amount. Is it $650 worth? That’s what I’m stuck on. People just go by vibe and say things like “it’s a good investment” but that’s just coming from I don’t know where.

Some locales in the US require testing for radon then mitigating during any home sale. These regulations somewhat change the marginal cost/benefit analysis because the money must be spent eventually.

If you own a home in such a locale, you might as well do any mitigation while living in the house. Otherwise you're not getting any cancer risk reduction for your dollars but you'll still pay those same dollars for the mitigation when you sell the house.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#292

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 ref…

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.

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?

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#293

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…

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?…

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

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Luckily, all my kids are well past the toddler age, ha ha

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#295
post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t I won’t read them. I already saw the overview ok Wikipedia. Some studies that may suggest hormesis, most of them flawed. Everything is either a proposal or hypothesis. Absolutely it should be studied but those radiation spas are bunk science for now.

Prove where is the flaw first. A small or old study is not necessarily flawed. The burden of proving they are flawed falls on you. And no, I care less that they have not been replicated because the community lacks interest. Nobody said the effect is miraculous or similar, to compete with modern medical applications, but certainly they are cheap methods that complement with other general wellness effects of spas.

The burden of proof is on the person making claims that goes against the various world organizations that claim otherwise. I agree the current models that deal with exposure are probably not accurate but again nobody has proven the beneficial claims you have stated. I tend to believe in the markets being efficient in the long run, if these spas were beneficial surely someone would have captured the data after multiple decades.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#296
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for proving my point. These are at best a hypothesis that no global body has approved. Is the LNT model overly strict? Probably. But is there strong evidence that low doses are beneficial? Nope.

No, you have proven my point. There is no strong evidence and IT WILL NEVER BE cause it's like trying to make a new study for a drug that has its patent expired. Are you willing to sponsor studies with your own money? Cause nobody else will. Unfortunately, we are stuck with the little evidence there is from the last century when it was the heyday of balneological applications. However, these little studies we have, e…

And yet it’s still all an unproven hypothesis. Glad you believe in it, placebos can be strong.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#297
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hormesis hypothesis has not been widely proven, but it has not disproved either. It's still a working hypothesis. And yes, patients sometime work with hypothesized therapies, especially if conventional therapies don't work for them or they get many adverse effects from them.

If I told you that hitting yourself in the dick with a hammer was good for you, would you have as much support and deference for The Schwanzhammertherapie Hypothesis as you do for hitting yourself all over with ionizing radiation? After all, I can't find any studies disproving it. Here is how Schwanzhammertherapie works: 'cellular repair in the body is stimulated, the number of dick hammerings is reduced' .

[dead]

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 ". It's not limited to environmental health…

Perhaps you are just a simple software developer, but there are plenty of people here who are genuine experts in every field imaginable: I have had intelligent discussions here with everyone from neuroscientists to microbiologists to carpenters to machinists.

More to your point, I think the modern idea that people must stay confined to their specialty is ridiculous. Not long ago it was common to have intelligent discussions - or do serious work - on topics where you had no formal education or experience. All of that occurred without the internet. Look at the early days of, for example, the Manhattan Project. Not a trivial undertaking, and yet many of the men did countless tasks where they had zero training or experience. Look at the history of any scientific field or large engineering project. For all of human history that is how it was: and now if you want to replace a toilet valve, or a lightswitch, or comment about a scientific topic, you must hire someone with the appropriate credentials.

Back to my point - as a matter of fact I do have a professional perspective on the question of indoor air pollutants. Perhaps not the credentials you seek, nevertheless: I develop consumer products for the home, and levels of indoor air pollutants are now high enough - due to precisely the causes I originally mentioned - that they are beginning to cause nasty interactions that destroy the products of my industry via fouling and corrosion. In fact, the professional associations for my industry have written extensively about the scale of the problem and several companies have invested significantly in R&D to identity solutions. In other words, the air we breathe is damaging the things around us; could it not damage our lungs as well? I do not make any absolute statements, but I think a serious discussion should be had and I see no reason that it shouldn’t also happen on HN.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#299

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…

What's a radon mitigation system like?

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#300
post #234
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 seatin…

It doesn't matter how good a driver I, or your wife, or any woman, or any man is. That drunk driver who's also texting and just had a stroke and passed out from fentanyl could plow into you while you're innocently stopped at a stop light and you're being as defensive as possible. I don't see any way to change that calculus for the paranoid, unfortunately.
Post reply on HN