All the excitement about nanotechnology comes down to this: Structures of materials at the scale of billionths of a meter take on unusual properties…

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The air pollution control measures that were put in place in Beijing during the 2008 Olympic Games - if continued - would cut almost in half the lifetime risk of lung cancer for the area’s residents from certain inhaled pollutants, a new study concludes…

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Researchers from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) have analysed levels of radon, a natural radioactive gas, in 58 secondary schools in Galicia. The results show that 34% of these schools exceed the limit of 400 Bequerels/m3 recommended by the European Union. Excessive inhalation of radon is associated with lung cancer…

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Anyone who has ridden behind a truck belching black exhaust knows the smell and discomfort caused by soot, the airborne carbon particles that result from the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons such as diesel fuel. Those soot particles remain in the body beyond the moment of discomfort and can lead to lung diseases and other conditions…

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About 1900 deaths from lung cancer per year in Germany are due to radon within residential buildings. This was the conclusion reached in the current edition of Deutsches Arzteblatt International by Klaus Schmid of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and his coauthors (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107(11): 181-6)…

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The volcanic eruptions thought responsible for Earth’s largest mass extinction - which killed more than 70 percent of plants and animals 250 million years ago - is still taking lives today…

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Radon is a colorless and odorless radioactive gas that is produced by the radioactive decay of radium. Radium is a product of uranium decay and is found in trace amounts naturally in nearly all rocks, soils, and groundwater as well as building materials, plants, animals, and the human body. Radon concentration is expressed as the amount of radiation that would be emitted by radon and its decay products in a liter of air; thus the units are picocuries per liter (pCi/L).

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A chemotherapy drug that is supposed to help save cancer patients’ lives, instead resulted in life-threatening and sometimes fatal allergic reactions.

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Exposure to particulate matter has been recognized as a contributing factor to lung cancer development for some time, but a new study indicates inhalation of certain particulates can actually cause some genes to become reprogrammed, affecting both the development and the outcome of cancers and other diseases. The research was presented on Sunday, May 17, at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.

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#7725 YOUNGER PATIENTS WITH LUNG CANCER HAVE BETTER SURVIVAL Lung cancer in younger patients may exhibit distinct clinical features than lung cancer in older patients, including better survival rates at each disease stage. Researchers from Stanford Cancer Center in California compared disease characteristics and survival of lung cancer patients aged 15 to 39 years at diagnosis with patients aged 40 years or over at diagnosis.
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