London, Europe Brief News – Scientists say they have identified the mechanism through which air pollution triggers lung cancer in non-smokers, a discovery one expert hailed as “an important step for science – and for society”.
The research illustrated the health risk posed by the tiny particles produced by burning fossil fuels, sparking calls for more urgent action to combat climate change.
It could also pave the way for a new field of cancer prevention, according to Charles Swanton of the United Kingdom’s Francis Crick Institute.
Swanton presented the research, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, at the European Society for Medical Oncology’s annual conference in Paris on Saturday.
Air pollution has long been thought to be linked to a higher risk of lung cancer in people who have never smoked.
“But we didn’t really know whether pollution was directly causing lung cancer – or how,” Swanton told the AFP news agency.
Traditionally it has been thought that exposure to carcinogens, such as those in cigarette smoke or pollution, causes DNA mutations that then become cancer.
But there was an “inconvenient truth” with this model, Swanton said: previous research has shown that the DNA mutations can be present without causing cancer – and that most environmental carcinogens do not cause the mutations.
