Lung cancer appears to mutate more in patients living in areas with higher levels of fine-particulate air pollution, such as that released by vehicles and air pollution.

This is the conclusion of a study from the National Institutes of Health and the University of California, San Diego, which studied tumors in nearly 900 lung cancer patients who had never smoked.

Despite this, paper author and oncologist Maria Teresa Landi of the National Cancer Institute told Newsweek, those in areas of higher air pollution „had a pattern of mutations that is typical of tumors from subjects who have smoked tobacco.”

Previous studies into the genomics of lung cancer have tended to focus exclusively on people who smoke tobacco, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of how the disease develops.

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