6 ms·
It would be interesting to understand why UT and NM fare so much better than MA or NY – or VT and DE for that matter.
by spac 4y ago
It would be interesting to understand why UT and NM fare so much better than MA or NY – or VT and DE for that matter.
- metadat 4y agoUtah is an easy one, the low lung cancer rate is because the huge population of Mormons don't smoke at all. There are also a lot of morms in Idaho, I was surprised to see how much higher the rates are.
- omginternets 4y agoPossibly also less air pollution ?
- metadat 4y agoMaybe, it's hard to say, lots of the population lives around SLC and Provo. Provo lies in the middle of a basin, surrounded by huge mountains that create a trap for smog inversion layers. You'd need data to know, not my anecdata :)
- kikokikokiko 4y agoAir pollution, just as "second hand" smoke, is way overblown as a risk factor for lung cancer. Nothing compares, not even close, to sending foreign particles, the end results of combustion, straight to your lungs, like smokers do. The result of years and years of this sludge accumulating on your alveoli is going to be bad, you don't have to be oncologist to see it. And that's why I always tell my pot head friends to beware of what will happen to their lungs 20, 30 years from now. "Muh, it's a natural plant!!!" If you burn it and send the results of the combustion to your lungs on a daily basis, good luck. I don't know about vaping, but in my opinion, if it's not air, pure and simple air, it should not be entering your lungs. Vaping probably is orders of magnitude safer than smoking, but who knows. We never know what we don't know before it happens.
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y agoUh-huh. Looking at a sibling comment where Salt Lake City was claimed to have "pretty bad air" I got interested in how bad it actually was. https://aqicn.org/city/utah/salt-lake-city/ https://aqicn.org/city/utah/salt-lake-city/ So… something like 5-10 µg/m³ PM 2.5 for most of the year, with rare spikes up to 30 µg/m³ for short periods of time. If that's your definition of air pollution, then sure. One cigarette a year will probably do more damage to you than that. I live in a really polluted place, with yearly PM 2.5 average of ~100 µg/m³ (daily mean of hundreds of micrograms per m³ in winter, and short spikes up to 1500 µg/m³ for hours at a time), and high levels of toxic gases (SO₂, NO₂, H₂S, HCl, HF, and a few others). Literally everyone here suffers from chronic bronchitis, including myself. (Never smoked.) Deaths from lung cancer and COPD among non-smokers are commonplace. I don't have the exact statistics (the government doesn't publish absolute numbers), but incidence of lung cancer is claimed to be around 3× the national average (which is already bad compared to developed countries). I believe it's also pretty bad in industrial Chinese cities, although they have so much smoking population it's difficult to differentiate.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoSLC has pretty bad air because of the geography. Although not everyone lives there.
- bnjemian 4y agoYup, and it's getting worse. This is largely driven by drought and the dessication of the Great Salt Lake. The dust pulled off the basin is also toxic due to heavy metals (most notably arsenic), industrial and agricultural runoff, and the remnants of algal blooms. Here's one recent article covering the topic: https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2022/6/29/23188005/opinion-the-toxic-tale-of-the-great-salt-lake-drought-water-receding-toxic-metals-arsenic-dust-strom https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2022/6/29/23188005/opinion-t...
- LinuxBender 4y agoThere are also a lot of Mormons in Western Wyoming.
- throwawayallday 4y agoMormons don't smoke.
- bnjemian 4y agoThis is literally the answer. My brother's a data scientist at a large health insurance company and this is a subject we've discussed at length. In short, because of the large Mormon population in Utah, the state has shockingly good statistics on a very wide range of disease incidences, health-related quality of life outcome measures, etc. With respect to health and longevity, it pays not to drink, smoke, or do drugs (surprise, surprise). Other interesting tidbit – his health insurance company (and I expect all others) took a substantial hit 2019-2020 from the initial phase of the pandemic. Come 2021-2022, large proportions of the unhealthiest segments of the population had passed away; covid + comorbidities puts you at a much greater risk of dying than covid alone. They integrated this fact into their modeling and, given that these people would no longer require care (e.g. dialysis, ER visits), predicted that utilization would go down substantially and, now providing for an overall healthier population, the company would be more profitable that year relative to pre-pandemic years. This turned out to be an accurate prediction.
- GlenTheMachine 4y agoNote that Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming also have relatively large LDS populations.
- silisili 4y agoI mean smoking is a factor, sure...but that doesn't explain why NM, who has a highish average smoking rate, is near the bottom. Same for how AL, who has a high smoking rate, is middle of the pack.
- iancmceachern 4y agoAlso demographics and ethnicity possibly? Utah has a 24% Hispanic population and NM is 49% Check out this study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1658387621000297 "Conclusion Hispanic ethnicity was associated with better survival in NSCLC. This survival advantage is likely the result of complex interactions amongst several physical, social, cultural, genomic, and environmental factors." Well put, these things are always complex.
- theGnuMe 4y agoDo people have basements? Radon?
- castlecrasher2 4y agoThe vast majority of UT houses have basements. Is radon a factor in lung cancer?
- tptacek 4y agoVery yes.
- inglor_cz 4y agoLiving in a country that has a lot of natural radon in some places, very definitely yes. New houses over here must be built in a way that mitigates radon exposure, unless that particular region is low-risk.
- akerl_ 4y agoAt risk of going wildly off topic from the post, I’d suggest that for anybody with disposable income, the value proposition of buying some air quality sensors is amazing. I installed some a month or two ago, and they caught alarmingly high radon levels in my basement that I’m now working to address. But also they catch more mundane things, like “oh, I tend to get headaches in the afternoon, which happens to be when the co2 levels are super high in my office”.
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- abruzzi 4y agoI've read that vitamin D can play a role in cancer prevention at a cellular level. Our bodies synthesize vitamin D using UVB in sunlight. You'll notice that most of the states at the bottom of the list (except DC ?!?) are sunny places, so I wouldn't be surprised if that is a contributing factor.
- spac 4y agoThat's an interesting point
- thebigspacefuck 4y agoHumidity or elevation?