Study finds cancer rates are higher among people who live in regions where the air contains plenty of oxygen

Jan 14, 2015 12:00 GMT  ·  By

By now, we're pretty much used to having researchers tell us that we shouldn't eat pizza or hamburgers, smoke, drink or do drugs, not unless we want to die at a young age of some seriously messed-up disease we could have easily dodged.

Still, the news that, according to evidence at hand, the oxygen present in the very air we breathe can give us lung cancer and ultimately kill us is bound to make people let out a wholehearted “Oh, come on!” and rightfully so.

No, this study is not some sick joke

The news that oxygen can give folks lung cancer is brought to us by a team of researchers in the US who detail how it was that they reached this mind-boggling conclusion is a paper in the medical bi-monthly publication CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

In the report detailing their work, the researchers explain that, looking to establish whether oxygen can sometimes kill, they got to work documenting cancer rates in several counties in the US' western regions. The counties that this study focused on sat at different elevations.

It was thus discovered that, the higher a county's elevation was, the lower the cancer rates recorded in that corner of the US were likely to be. Specifically, the scientists documented a lung cancer rate decrease of 7.23 cases per 100,000 individuals for every 1,000 meter (3,281 feet) increase in elevation.

The specialists argue that this link between cancer incidence and elevation was due to the fact that, the further up folks lived, the less oxygen the air that they breathed contained. Interestingly enough, the researchers failed to also identify a link between elevation and other forms of cancer.

This supports their claim that, all things considered, it could be that people who live at lower elevations and who are, therefore, exposed to a higher concentration of atmospheric oxygen are more likely to develop lung cancer at some point in their life.

“Were the entire United States situated at the elevation of San Juan County, CO (3473 m), we estimate 65,496 fewer new lung cancer cases would arise per year,” the scientists behind this rather peculiar research project write in their paper in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, as cited by Science Daily.

How the heck can oxygen give people lung cancer?

Pretty much everybody knows that, were it not for oxygen, life on our good old planet would be, well, inexistent. Otherwise put, we owe our very existence to this chemical element. However, it looks like oxygen can, in fact, under very specific circumstances, promote cancer.

Studies carried out over the years have shown that, when the cells that make up our body consume oxygen, chemically reactive molecules that contain oxygen and that are known as reactive oxygen species are produced. In time, these molecules can trigger cancer-causing damage and mutations.

Mind you, the outcome of this study does not mean that we should all pack our bags and move to the mountains or that we should do our best to breathe as little as possible while going about our daily routine. The find is merely expected to help scientists gain a better understanding of cancer.