Bryan Johnson, known for his anti-ageing research, walked out of a podcast recording with Zerodha’s co-founder Nikhil Kamath, complaining about discomfort due to the poor air quality.
The American tech millionaire, in a Tuesday post on micro-blogging platform X, lamented air pollution not being a national priority for Indian leaders, claiming that prioritizing cleaning up the air would do Indians more good “than curing all cancers”.
If recent studies are anything to go by, Johnson, who visited India in January, won’t be off the mark.
A study by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine on 3 February found a rise in lung cancer diagnoses among individuals who have never smoked, attributing air pollution as a major contributor to this trend. “As smoking prevalence continues to decline in many countries worldwide, the proportion of lung cancer in people who have never smoked has increased,” the study noted.
Traditionally, smoking was seen as a primary risk for lung cancer. However, the study showed the trend is seeing a flip. Adenocarcinoma—a cancer that affects the outer airways of the lungs—has become the most common among four subtypes of lung cancer. It is the most common type of lung cancer in people who have never smoked and is linked to PM2.5 pollution.
Over 200,000 cases were attributable to Adenocarcinoma in 2022, according to the Lancet study.
India, which has among the highest number of polluted cities in the world, paints an equally grim picture when it comes to lung cancer. India had an estimated 1.5 million persons with cancer in 2023, up 12% since 2018, according to data from the National Cancer Registry Programme (NCRP), shared in the Rajya Sabha in July 2024. Cancers of the lung, mouth, stomach and oesophagus were the most common among males, while cancers of the breast and cervix uteri were the most common among females, according to the NCRP 2020 report—the latest available.
The mess
Indian cities, especially North India, have been grappling with severely poor air quality for almost a decade. According to another study published in The Lancet in December 2024, nearly the entire Indian population was exposed to PM2.5 levels above the limit prescribed by WHO. When measured as per the Indian National Ambient Air Quality Standards, nearly 82% of the population was exposed to PM2.5 levels above the prescribed limit.
The study further attributed nearly 3.8 million deaths between 2009 and 2019 to over-exposure to PM2.5. Based on WHO estimates, the figure increased to 16.6 million deaths during the same period.
The Lancet study emphasizes the importance of prioritizing preventive measures, such as air-quality management programmes focused on major sources of air pollution. Will our leaders take notice?
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