Air pollution causing 1,100 cases a year of main form of lung cancer in UK

Smog over London. About 200,000 cases of adenocarcinoma were associated with exposure to air pollution worldwide in 2022. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

More than 1,100 people a year in the UK are developing the most prevalent form of lung cancer as a result of air pollution, the Guardian can reveal.

Exposure to toxic air was attributed to 515 men and 590 women in the UK in 2022 getting adenocarcinoma – now the most dominant of the four main subtypes of lung cancer – an analysis by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency found.