Image by Getty / Futurism Cancer
It's no secret that our efforts to save the planet from the excesses of global trade are failing spectacularly. Our bodies are riddled with manmade compounds, cities are routinely enveloped by massive clouds of noxious smoke, and glaciers are melting faster than ever before. Indeed, in 2025, not even the remote ice shelves of Antarctica are safe from humanity's garbage.
At the same time as the Earth struggles to hold the weight of all our garbage, a concerning trend is emerging: the number of people under 50 being diagnosed with cancer is increasing throughout the world.
This trend is especially pronounced in lung cancer — far and away the deadliest form of cancer — which is growing at an alarming rate among nonsmokers.
Recent reporting on this concerning trend by The Canadian Press noted that nearly a quarter of lung cancer patients in Canada are nonsmokers. That number has been trending upward for nearly a decade, and could be higher, as lung cancer screenings typically target smokers, leaving nonsmokers out of the loop on early detection.
"For me to get a cancer diagnosis was a big shock. And then to have a lung cancer diagnosis was very puzzling for me," Katie Hulan, a 37-year-old tech worker told the news agency. Although Hulan doesn't smoke, she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in late 2020.
Her story is emblematic of another concerning trend: the fact that more nonsmoking women are developing lung cancer than men, and that researchers don't know why.
"More women will die of lung cancer than will die of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and cervical cancer combined," Dr Rosalyn Juergens, a medical oncologist at McMaster University, told The Canadian Press. "One in five of them will be people who have never touched a cigarette a day in their lives."
In Canada, radon exposure — invisible gas emanating from the soil — is the number one cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers. Radon exposure is expected to increase drastically in the coming years, as permafrost across the great white north melts under ever-rising global temperatures, releasing the radioactive gas into the air. When that happens, studies show that society's poorest are at high risk, owing to the high cost of radon testing, not to mention abatement when it is found.
In the rest of the world, particulate matter from air pollution is being increasingly linked to the growing number of nonsmoking lung cancer patients.
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