You don’t need tobacco to fall prey to lung cancer, ordinary wood smoke is enough, a Mexican study has found. A research team, led by Javier Delgado from the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases in Calzada de Tlalpan in Mexico, studied 62 patients who were to take chemotherapy sessions for lung cancer.
The team found that about 39 per cent of this group was constantly exposed to wood smoke over a long period. Of the 24 who developed lung cancer due to wood smoke, 22 were non-smoking females who used wood for cooking. In the case of the other 37 per cent, smoking was to blame.
“We found that 38.7 percent of the lung cancer patients examined were non-smokers with a history of continuous wood exposure for more than 10 years,” the researchers wrote in a report, published in
Chest magazine.
The team also studied tumor samples from both types of patients–who developed cancer due to smoking and those due to wood smoke–and found that the molecular modifications brought about in both cases were the same. One such similarity was in the p53 gene, a mutation in which contributed to the development of cancer.
“Our findings suggest that wood smoke, like tobacco smoke, could be involved in lung cancer,” the researchers wrote.
The women who were afflicted with cancer due to wood smoke were from poor, rural Mexican villages and had spent hours in an enclosed space filled with wood smoke. “In our country, women are exposed to wood smoke for many hours per day. That could explain the higher incidence of lung cancer associated with wood smoke in women,” the authors said.
“It is important to consider wood smoke exposure as a possible risk factor for the development of lung cancer in nonsmokers,” they concluded.
Previous studies have said that wood smoke increases the chances of throat and mouth cancer as also respiratory illnesses like asthma, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema.
