Meta-analysis reveals increased urological cancer risk in exposed global populations, highlighting the critical disease-prevention potential of strict clean-air standards.
Exposure to ambient air pollution has significant adverse health effects; however, whether air pollution is associated with urological cancer is largely unknown. We conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis with epidemiological studies, showing that a 5 μg/m³ increase in PM2.5 exposure is associated with a 6%, 7%, and 9%, increased risk of overall urological, bladder, and kidney cancer, respectively; and a 10 μg/m³ increase in NO₂ is linked to a 3%, 4%, and 4% higher risk of overall urological, bladder, and prostate cancer, respectively. Were these associations to reflect causal relationships, lowering PM2.5 levels to 5.8 μg/m³ could reduce the age-standardized rate of urological cancer by 1.5 ~ 27/100,000 across the 15 countries with the highest PM2.5 level from the top 30 countries with the highest urological cancer burden. Implementing global health policies that can improve air quality could potentially reduce the risk of urologic cancer and alleviate its burden.
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Li et al. (2024) studied this question.
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