Home / Sunday-mid-day / / Article /
Smoking kills, and so does breathing
Updated On: 04 August, 2024 07:44 AM IST | Mumbai | Sonia Lulla
A recent study reveals significant proportion of lung cancer patients have never smoked… just been inhaling life-threatening levels of pollution
Listen to this article :
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Peppered across news websites over the past several years are headlines describing the pitiful state of the environment. In a blow to those striving to improve physical health, reports reveal that breathing in a polluted city could be equivalent to smoking several cigarettes a day. A research published in The Lancet’s eClinical Medicine Journal found that not only were a significant proportion of lung cancer patients in India non-smokers, but also that the disease appears around a decade earlier in India than in western countries. Doctors found the study “not surprising, but thought-provoking”.
Dr Kumar Prabhash, an author credited on the study, tells mid-day that several factors relating to the disease have come to fore. “One of them is that a good number of patients are non-smokers,” he says. “Abroad [this group comprises] 10 to 20 per cent; here, it is closer to 40 or 50 per cent. That is strikingly high.” He adds that pollution is proposed as a causative factor for the presence of the disease in such individuals. “We have lots of particulate matter in the environment because of [construction] work,” he says.
Trending Stories
Latest Photos
Latest Videos
Latest Web Stories
ADVERTISEMENT
Mid-Day Fast
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT