Long-term concentrations of ambient air pollutants and incident lung cancer in California adults: results from the AHSMOG study.Adventist Health Study on Smog.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship of long-term concentrations of ambient air pollutants and risk of incident lung cancer in nonsmoking Caifornia adults. A cohort study of 6,338 nonsmoking, non-Hispanic, white Califorian adults, ages 27-95, was followed from 1977 to 1992 for newly diagnosed cancers. Monthly ambient air pollution data were interpolated to zip code centroids according to home and work location histories, cumulated, and then averaged over time. The increased relative risk (RR) ofincident lung cancer in mdes associated with an interquartile range (IQR) increase in 100 ppb ozone (03) was 3.56 [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.35-9.42]. Incident lung cancer in males was also positively asoated with IQR increases for mean concentrations of particulate matter <10 Pm (PM1O; RR = 5.21; CI, 1.94-13.99) and SO2 (RR = 2.66; CI, 1.624.39). For females, incident lung cancer was positively associated with IQR increases for S02 (RR-2.14; CI, 1.36-3.37) and IQR increas for PM10 exceedace frequencies of 50 pglm3 (RR = 1.21; CI, 0.55-2.66) and 60 pgWm3 (RR m