ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1593415
Epidemiological trends of lung cancer attributed to residential radon exposure at global, regional, and national level: a trend analysis study from 1990 to 2021
Provisionally accepted
- National Center For Occupational Safety And Health NHC, Beijing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Lung cancer (LC) remains a leading cause of cancer-related mortality globally, with radon identified as the second major risk factor. This study aimed to analyze the global, regional, and national burden of LC attributed to residential radon exposure from 1990 to 2021.The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2021 database were employed to estimate the disease trends of LC attributed to residential radon exposure across sex, age groups, and socioeconomic development levels via the socio-demographic index (SDI). Trends of the age-standardized rates (ASRs) were evaluated using estimated annual percentage change (EAPC). The relationship of the sociodemographic index (SDI) with ASRs was assessed via Spearman correlation and LOESS regression.In 2021, residential radon caused 82,160 global LC deaths (an increase of 66.87% since 1990), while the ASRs declined globally (ASMR EAPC: -0.26, 95%C: -0.51 to -0.01; ASDR EAPC: -0.65, 95%CI: -0.85 to -0.44). The disease burden of residential radon-induced LC was higher in middle and high latitude nations. With the increase of SDI, ASRs showed a downward trend in most regions, while an upward trend at national level. Across age and sex, the elderly males exhibited higher burden.Conclusions: While global ASRs declined, rising absolute burdens underscore radon's persistent threat, particularly in rapidly urbanizing and high-latitude regions. Targeted radon mitigation, enhanced early detection, and gender-specific interventions are critical.
Keywords: lung cancer, Residential radon, Global burden, Epidemiology, trend analysis
Received: 14 Mar 2025; Accepted: 21 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xiong, Zhang, Peng, Liang, Lian, Zhao, Wang, Lu and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yuwen Li, National Center For Occupational Safety And Health NHC, Beijing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.