TEESIDE, England, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Living close to heavy industry may increase the risk of developing lung cancer, suggests a study done in Britain.
More than 200 women under the age of 80 with primary lung cancer were compared with 339 healthy women matched for age and sex in Teeside, England.
By 1945, Billingham on Teeside was the largest single chemical production complex in the world, and houses for the workforce were built as close as possible to the industrial sites, according to study author Dr. R. Edwards of Wellington School Medicine and Health Sciences in New Zealand.
All the study participants were interviewed at length about their lives, including full histories of where they had lived, their employment, as well as their smoking habits and exposure to secondhand smoke. The average length of time that all participants had lived in the area was over 55 years.
The distances from heavy industry sites were grouped into three zones: less than 3 miles for zone A; 3 to 6 miles for zone B; and more than 6 miles for zone C.
After taking account of smoking and other factors likely to influence the results, the data showed that women who had lived in zone A for more than 25 years were almost twice as likely to develop lung cancer as those who had not lived there, according to the study published in the journal Thorax and printed ahead in the British Medical Journal.
