Lung Cancer Targets More Than Just Kentucky Smokers
While at home recovering from chemotherapy for lung cancer, Debbie Best learned in May that her husband, Ray, had the same disease — even though neither had ever smoked. Doctors say the chances of two nonsmokers in the same family developing lung cancer are about one in 10,000, and they aren’t sure what caused it.
“It is all so strange,” said Debbie Best, 59, of Louisville, whose husband is 60. “Either it’s a huge, huge coincidence or we were both exposed to something. But we don’t know what, and no one can tell us what it was.”
The Bests are among more than 4,800 Kentuckians diagnosed each year with lung cancer — a disease that both strikes and kills residents at the nation’s highest rates and affects more than just smokers.
Tonight the Kentucky and Southern Indiana chapter of the Washington, D.C.-based Lung Cancer Alliance will hold a vigil at Louisville Slugger Field to raise awareness of the disease and honor those who have been affected. The alliance is pushing for a more comprehensive focus on the disease that addresses not only the need to stop smoking but also prevention, early detection and research.
According to the latest statistics from the National Cancer Institute, Kentuckians get lung cancer at a rate 53 percent higher than the national average. Nationally, the NCI estimates that 156,940 men and women will die of the disease this year, making it America’s deadliest cancer.
Experts say 85 percent of lung cancer cases are linked to smoking, and Kentucky consistently has some of the nation’s highest smoking rates. Federal statistics show that nearly a quarter of adult Kentuckians were smokers in 2010.
But the disease can also be caused by secondhand smoke, radon, asbestos exposure, air pollution or unknown factors.
Doctors have told the Bests their disease may be linked to an unknown environmental trigger. Neither worked with asbestos, Debbie Best said, and two of the three houses they’ve lived in tested negative for radon; the third, where they lived five years, was never tested.
About The Author
Comments