# How does someone who doesn't smoke get lung cancer? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 14, 2013, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660 "2013-04-14T03:14:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/1 "2013-04-14T03:14:29Z")
A friend died today of lung cancer. Non-smoker, didn’t work around chemicals or in workplaces with a lot of smoke; she was a librarian. I thought lung cancer was triggered almost entirely be environmental factors? ---
**Author:** ![Michael63129](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Michael63129](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael63129)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/2 "2013-04-14T03:58:05Z")
Cigarette smoke is just a more concentrated form of air pollution, which has been implicated in a significant number of non-smoker lung cancer cases; [e.g.](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-air-pollution-idUSTRE79R5NM20111028): > [@](#): > > After the team took into account other cancer risk factors, such as second-hand smoke and radon exposure, they found that for every 10 extra units of air pollution exposure, a person’s risk of lung cancer rose by 15 to 27 percent… > > …Laden noted that the pollution levels [within air quality standards] associated with the increased risk of cancer in the current study are not uncommon in the U.S. (in China, air pollution was a factor in [1.2 million deaths in 2010](http://www.china.org.cn/china/2013-04/11/content_28513523.htm), and only around 11% were respiratory cancers, so like cigarette smoking, lung cancer is just one of the health risks from air pollution) ---
**Author:** ![PurpleClogs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f04885/32.png) [@PurpleClogs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PurpleClogs)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/3 "2013-04-14T05:20:08Z")
My gramma died of lung cancer. She never smoked. It began as breast cancer and spread to her lymph nodes, then lungs. This is fairly common actually. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/4 "2013-04-14T05:33:14Z")
I thought it was established that _some_ cancers begin as ordinary mutations of cells within the body, i.e., not caused by outside causes, but simply by internal spontaneous mutation. Of course, there are also things like radon gas, or cosmic rays, which are outside causes, and can pretty much get anybody, anytime. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/5 "2013-04-14T07:13:39Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I thought it was established that _some_ cancers begin as ordinary mutations of cells within the body, i.e., not caused by outside causes, but simply by internal spontaneous mutation. Indeed. I recall a friend who smoked heavily, but developed brain cancer. It did her in. The autopsy indicated that. There were no problems with the lungs. Rest well, Suzanne. I miss you. ---
**Author:** ![thicksantorum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/65b543/32.png) [@thicksantorum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thicksantorum)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/6 "2013-04-14T10:47:05Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > I thought lung cancer was triggered **almost** entirely be environmental factors? Correct. Keyword bolded. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/7 "2013-04-14T13:22:28Z")
> [@PurpleClogs](#): > > My gramma died of lung cancer. She never smoked. It began as breast cancer and spread to her lymph nodes, then lungs. This is fairly common actually. Going just by your description, she didn’t die of lung cancer. She died of metastatic breast cancer, which had spread to the lungs among other places. Different situation. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/8 "2013-04-14T13:28:40Z")
And something similar might hold true for the OP. For all we know, the “lung” cancer might have “sprouted” from metasteses from some other site. ---
**Author:** ![Jenaroph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Jenaroph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenaroph)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/9 "2013-04-14T14:20:49Z")
Sometimes, people with no discernible risk factors get sick anyway. Lung cancer existed before the invention of smoking. Smoking drastically increases the risk of lung cancer, to an extent that you can arguably say it _caused_ it in a given patient perhaps, but it is magical thinking to say “since I don’t smoke, I won’t get lung cancer.” ---
**Author:** ![ethelbert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@ethelbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ethelbert)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/10 "2013-04-14T14:30:49Z")
My father died of Bronchioloalveolar cancer, a type of lung cancer with no statistical correlation to smoking. ---
**Author:** ![bizerta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@bizerta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bizerta)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/11 "2013-04-14T15:46:00Z")
Based on [Lifetime probability of developing lung cancer, by smoking status, Canada - PubMed](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7895211), about 1.5% of non-smokers develop lung cancer, whereas smokers are ten times as likely to develop lung cancer, 12%-17%. ---
**Author:** ![D18](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@D18](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D18)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/12 "2013-04-14T15:47:43Z")
The one word answer to your question: randomly. I can’t search right now, but I believe in another thread on lung cancer **KarlGuass** made the point that the prevalence of non-smoking-related lung cancers have about the same prevalence as other cancers for which there aren’t known risk factors. Apologies to KG if I’m misremembering the point. ---
**Author:** ![RetroVertigo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b38774/32.png) [@RetroVertigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RetroVertigo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/13 "2013-04-14T16:15:00Z")
Radon. Asbestos. ---
**Author:** ![YourAdHere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/65b543/32.png) [@YourAdHere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YourAdHere)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/14 "2013-04-14T17:47:55Z")
Know someone with lung cancer who never smoked and was going crazy searching for the cause. The doctor told him not to beat himself up over it because sometimes it’s just random. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/15 "2013-04-14T17:52:26Z")
Read about [Alice Trillin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Stewart_Trillin). She suffered lung cancer from growing up in a home where both parents were heavy smokers, though she never smoked herself. In his book Remembering Alice, Calvin Trillin wrote about how Alice was willing to discuss their two daughter’s ideas on sex, drinking and drugs with them. “But smoking is not allowed. Period.” ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/16 "2013-04-14T18:03:53Z")
You may recall that [Andy Kaufman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_kaufman#Illness_and_death) died of a rare type of lung cancer not associated with smoking. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/17 "2013-04-14T20:16:16Z")
Similarly, a cancer researcher who shared a Nobel prize for discovering reverse transcriptase, [Howard Temin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Temin), died of lung cancer at only age 59, and was not a smoker. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/18 "2013-04-14T21:03:31Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I thought it was established that _some_ cancers begin as ordinary mutations of cells within the body, i.e., not caused by outside causes, but simply by internal spontaneous mutation. > > Of course, there are also things like radon gas, or cosmic rays, which are outside causes, and can pretty much get anybody, anytime. Mutation seems to be an essential part of the transformation process. Going from noncancerous to cancerous takes a minimum of three independent mutations, if I recall my old immunology class aright. The problem is, “ordinary” mutations as you describe them here look exactly the same as mutations caused by external causes (radiation, pollution, smoking, etc). There’s really no way to point to specific mutations and say “this one was just caused by a random accident in the cell, and this one was caused by a puff of smoke you took in 2005, and this one was caused by a fungal toxin.” So since all cancers have mutations, and we can’t detect mutation causes, there’s really no way to say how many cancers are caused from “internal” or “external” mutations. We can do gross estimations, by measuring mutation rates in smokers vs nonsmokers, for instance, but that has limited power. ---
**Author:** ![yorick73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/b5a626/32.png) [@yorick73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yorick73)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-someone-who-doesnt-smoke-get-lung-cancer/655660/19 "2013-04-14T21:58:53Z")
There are a number of different types of cancer that originate in the lungs. Small cell lung cancer is the one usually associated with smoking. There are different types of non small cell lung cancer. Smoking obviously increases your lung cancer risk but is not the only thing that causes lung cancer.