It isn’t a breath of fresh air.
A latest study has found that air pollution may cause lung cancer without mutating cells.
Published Wednesday in the journal Naturethe study analyzed the presence of lung cancer in non-smokers using mice as test subjects.
Researchers found that as an alternative of causing mutations, exposure to the pollutants caused inflammation that promoted tumor growth in tissue with existing mutations.
In accordance with Professor Charles Swanton of London’s Francis Crick Institute, one in all the authors of the study, cancer-causing mutations, normally inactive, naturally accumulate over time.
“We have shown that air pollution wakes up these cells in the lungs, encouraging them to grow and potentially form tumors,” said Swanton. in an announcement.
![Pneumonia graphic](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009264183.jpg?w=1024)
Worldwide, air pollution causes about 9 million “avoidable” deaths annually, as the World Health Organization has stated that 99% of the world breathes toxic air.
While lung cancer is commonly related to smokers, air pollution may also cause a plague.
“The purpose is that exposure to carcinogens can promote cancer without doing anything to the DNA,” medical geneticist Serena Nik-Zainal of the University of Cambridge, he said in an announcement. “Not every carcinogen is a mutagen.”
![Air pollution in China](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009264032.jpg?w=1024)
To research this phenomenon, Swanton put his team to work. They collected each environmental and epidemiological data from Taiwan, South Korea, Canada and the UK, specializing in individuals who carried mutations in the EGFR gene, which they said was more common in non-smokers.
By mimicking a gene mutation in mice, the research team then exposed the rodents to air pollution or particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5), observing the absence of cellular mutations and a rise in inflammation.
“The major mechanism by which air pollution causes cancer isn’t through the induction of recent mutations,” Allan Balmain, a cancer researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, said in an announcement. “This persistent inflammation that becomes chronic is important for these mutated cells to become tumors.”
![Pollution in London](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009264033.jpg?w=1024)
The authors of the study wrote that they “found a big relationship between PM2.5 levels and incidence of lung cancer for 32,957 cases of EGFR-induced lung cancer” contained in the analyzed datasets.
IN THE AFTERNOON2.5 – named for the size of the particulate matter, measuring 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter – has been linked to other negative health conditions resembling heart attacks and strokes. The pollutant particles that result from smoke, automobile exhaust and power plant emissions are sufficiently small to enter the lungs and thus into the bloodstream.
But the researchers also noticed that some immune cells rushing to the site of inflammation contained an inflammation-promoting protein, IL-1β. By blocking the protein, the incidence of lung cancer in mice decreased.
The study’s findings formed the basis of the authors’ appeal to legislators to enhance anti-pollution initiatives that might ‘reduce the burden of disease’.
![Air pollution in Chiang Mai](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009264031.jpg?w=1024)
“The mechanism we’ve identified may ultimately help us find higher ways to stop and treat lung cancer in never-smokers,” said Swanton. “If we will stop cell growth in response to air pollution, we will reduce the risk of lung cancer.”