As to lung cancer risk factors, modest older houses in the South often relied on wood cooking stoves and traditional fireplaces. Both generated smoke and pollutants in household air, especially before electricity became widely available.
In addition, regulation and practice in the South long tolerated higher levels of cancer causing pollutants from incinerators and coal plants.
For example, for decades, a few blocks from the Florida state capitol building in Tallahassee, there was a close knit and fondly remembered black community known as Smokey Hollow.
Located in a wide stream gully, Smokey Hollow got its name from a near constant blanket of smoke. That smoke was generated by wood cooking stoves, passing trains that burned coal, from Tallahassee's nearby municipal incinerator, and by a nearby coal gasification plant.
Eventually, Smokey Hollow was bought up for expansion of Florida's state office buildings. The site of the coal gasification plant had to be declared a toxic waste due to accumulated creosote contamination.
Since lung cancer usually takes decades to develop, the South's higher levels of air pollution in the past continue to generate cases. The effect seems to be a wave of lung cancer cases after early deaths from heart disease were prevented by modern treatments.
In a way, it is good news that people in Appalachia now outlive heart disease and then suffer from lung cancer due to long ago pollution that has been remedied. The lung cancer cases seem odd because their causes are (mostly) no longer extant and obvious.
>> As to lung cancer risk factors, modest older houses in the South often relied on wood cooking stoves and traditional fireplaces. Both generated smoke and pollutants in household air, especially before electricity became widely available. <<
I grew up in a home heated by a wood-burning stove. That fire smelled sweet. Probably not great for you, but burning wood is natural. Last few days, these fires have smelled horrible.
>> In addition, regulation and practice in the South long tolerated higher levels of cancer causing pollutants from incinerators and coal plants. <<
Y’all are gonna put together which state I’m talking about, but they don’t rely on incinerators and coal plants around here at all. The funny thing is that I grew up near a massive incineration operation, and it never smelled so damn much as this... but there’s a big cancer cluster around it anyway.