The study followed 414,016 US patients aged 65 or older with histologically confirmed small-cell or non-small-cell lung cancer diagnosed between 2006 and 2019, contributing 1.21 million person-years with a median follow-up of 2 years. Daily modelled wildfire-related and non-wildfire PM2.5 were aggregated to residential zip code and entered as 3-year moving averages in time-varying Cox models of all-cause mortality. The analysis separates wildfire smoke from other fine particulate exposure in a population already diagnosed with lung cancer.
Why it is interesting: It treats wildfire smoke as a distinct exposure with its own survival effect, in a cohort large enough to separate it from background PM2.5.