from Hacker News

Asian American women are getting lung cancer despite never smoking

by panabee on 4/25/24, 7:16 PM with 146 comments

• by timerol on 4/25/24, 11:18 PM

  > Over 50% of Asian American women who have lung cancer have never smoked

  Is this really that surprising, considering that only 2.6%[1] of Asian American women smoke? If 0% of Asian American women smoked, then 100% of the lung cancer cases would come from non-smokers. As it is, the group with the lowest percentage of smokers should have the highest percentage of lung cancer cases in non-smokers.

  The article gives no absolute rates to compare, and I can't easily find the article they quote for the rising rates of lung cancer in Asian American women. Given the poor interpretation of the subheading, I wouldn't be surprised if it was entirely explained by aging, or was a reversion to the mean from a very low baseline.

  [1] From another comment on this article: https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/impact-of-to...

• by helsinkiandrew on 4/25/24, 7:38 PM

  12% of Asian American men smoke compared with 2.6% of women. So non smoking Asian women are more likely to live with a smoking man. Could second hand smoking exposure be a factor in this?

  https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/impact-of-to...

• by darth_avocado on 4/25/24, 8:06 PM

  I am sure this inevitably is going to blame Asian cooking, but one important factor here is that the women surveyed were 40-70 year old. It is important, because a huge portion of these women would be first generation immigrants. That is important to know because first generation immigrants from decades ago are more likely to have a lower socioeconomic living conditions. Life in Asia with higher pollution and lower safety standards, life in America in poor neighborhoods with exposure to pollution, asbestos, and other carcinogens are all likely contributing factors.

• by lambdaba on 4/25/24, 7:46 PM

  Wasn't there something about some seed oil fumes being toxic? Maybe it's related to some cooking practices. Highly speculative but the cooking oil toxicity is well-known.

  [edit] found this with a quick search, seems relevant: Exposure to Cooking Oil Fumes and Oxidative Damages: A Longitudinal Study in Chinese Military Cooks https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4029104/

  [edit 2] and indeed the article mentions it, although just in passing, still my hunch would go towards this as it seems a more specific factor than the others that are mentioned

• by mastazi on 4/25/24, 10:20 PM

  My wife is Thai, we now live in Australia.

  Back in Thailand she and her mother often used coal for cooking (which is listed in the article as a possible cause) but after moving to Australia, she no longer used it because it is impractical (the coal is hard to find, the type of stove used for cooking with coal is not readily available, neighbours would complain about the smoke, etc etc).

  I imagine that most other Asian women who migrated to Western countries face a similar situation and no longer use coal on a daily basis.

  Also, I am sceptical that cooking oils could be a factor, it seems to me that, at least in the parts of Asia where I have lived, the types of cooking oils used are similar to the ones used in the West. I have seen the comments about mustard oil but its usage seems to be limited to certain countries or regions and not widespread everywhere in Asia, whereas according to the article, the issue affects women from various countries from India to China.

  EDIT - however some of the comments indicate that other oils, not just mustard oil, also present similar health challenges and they are widely used in several Asian cooking traditions.

• by d_burfoot on 4/25/24, 9:06 PM

  It's worth noting in this context that Asian-American women are by far the longest-lived demographic group overall. Asians have a combined life expectancy of 86 years in the US, and women generally have a 4-5 year advantage relative to men.

  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_health_in_the_United_...

• by ahepp on 4/25/24, 7:58 PM

  A graph in the article is captioned:

  > A study of nearly 4,000 non-smoking women found that the share of Asian American women who developed lung cancer was more than twice that of white women.

  And then proceeds to list "53.4%" for Asian.

  Are we to believe that in a sample of "nearly 4,000 non-smoking women", over half of the Asian American women developed lung cancer?

  Elsewhere in the article it is said that

  > Among Asian American women who have lung cancer, more than 50% have never smoked"

  Those seem like completely different things to me...

• by baduongnham on 4/25/24, 9:46 PM

  I see a lot of comments being made on here that are highly speculative of actual Asian American culture coming from users who - from their post histories - are not Asian. It's a lot of hearsay, and none of it is lived experience. The views that we "smoke behind our parents backs", or "burn a lot of incense", or "cook with a wok" are dated and archaic takes on what our lives are like. To the users making these comments - have you ever been in an Asian household?

• by ryukafalz on 4/25/24, 8:31 PM

  The first thing that popped into my mind is that in the city nearest me, Chinatown was bisected by a freeway back in the 80s (opening in 1991). That'll be a bunch of new carcinogens in the air concentrated around that specific neighborhood.

• by keepamovin on 4/25/24, 9:27 PM

  I have a bizarre theory that 1 - 1.5 packs of cigarettes per year is actually beneficial for health. This theory has two parts:

  - small amounts of nicotine occsaionnaly are excellent for the brain

  - the innoculatory effects of small occasional acute exposure to toxins and carcinogens preemptively activates and trains your body and its immune system to respond to the types of things that cause damage. Basically by activating the damage repair systems occasionally under a mild stressor you keep yourself inoculated against seemingly damage-associated conditions.

  I'll let y'all know how it's going in 200 years or so :)

• by retinaros on 4/26/24, 7:54 PM

  soybean oil is definitly the main differentiator and one of the most toxic oil there is and wouldnt be surprised that high smoking it increase risks of lung cancer. asian women being the cooks in most traditional family there you go… I am myself asian and totally stopped using it. I also suspect chili to be the reason regions like korea have high intestine/colorectal cancer

• by lawgimenez on 4/25/24, 11:43 PM

  I guess we should start breaking down Asia, not just lump everyone into this demographic. People here are confused between South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, there may be some overlapping similarities but culturally it is vastly different.

• by halfjoking on 4/26/24, 12:57 AM

  A concerning cancer trend? Started in late 2021?

  Among the most Covid-vaccinated demographic in the nation?

  Wonder what it could be???

  https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/178355979028893705...

• by GerryB on 4/26/24, 2:27 AM

  I was happily surprised to see multiple actual studies and references linked in the article, unexpected from a site like NBC news.

• by engineer_22 on 4/25/24, 8:43 PM

  Spending too much time in the LA metro area

• by sizzle on 4/26/24, 6:25 PM

  Is this risk correlated to inhaling vast amounts of smoke from cooking in Asian households?

• by stevev on 4/25/24, 8:55 PM

  Hairspray that are toxic and poison.

• by kingspact on 4/25/24, 8:54 PM

  No, they're smoking behind their parents backs when they're young, and they're not telling their doctors, because Asian Americans, like many minorities, tend to patronize doctors of their own ethnicity and those doctors know their parents.

  Start doing autopsies on them - oh wait that's forbidden in their culture.

• by syngrog66 on 4/25/24, 10:21 PM

  should not be on Hacker News

• by DoreenMichele on 4/25/24, 9:29 PM

  Very glad to see some people trying to do some research on this population cohort of Asian American women who never smoked.

  It would help if we had a clearer idea of what cancer is. Some cancers are known to be caused by viruses. Maybe someday they will have clearer distinctions between viral cancers and other cancers and that will help solve mysteries like this one.

  I'm frankly surprised by this. The only thing I had ever heard of was the Japanese smoking paradox where Japanese people smoke at higher rates and have lower rates of lung cancer. How or if that relates to this, I don't know.

• by attentive on 4/25/24, 9:13 PM

  Nobody mentioned it, but some Asians are heavy incense burners. It can't be too good for their health.