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There is an increasing incidence of lung cancer cases in both male and female never-smokers, said Minister of Health Ong Ye Kung, citing a 2026 modelling study premised on local data.<\/p>\n
He was responding to a written parliamentary question by MP Cai Yinzhou (Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC) on Wednesday (Oct 7), who had asked for the local trend in lung cancer incidence among never smokers over the past 10 years.<\/p>\n
The first-term MP also asked if the Ministry of Health has assessed the long-term PM2.5 exposure, including from transboundary haze, to such incidence.<\/p>\n
Data from the Singapore Cancer Registry for the five years from 2017 to 2021 showed that lung cancer killed about 100 people here each month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is about 36 per cent more than the 74 who died due to colorectal cancer \u2014 the second-biggest killer cancer \u2014 which sees 204 cases diagnosed each month, compared to the 149 for lung cancer.<\/p>\n
In a health information video posted on its social media on Aug 11, Clinical Assistant Professor Tan Wei Chong from the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) said lung cancer is the number one killer in males, and for females, the number three killer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The other half are typically attributed to non-smokers.”<\/p>\n
A study by NCCS also found that 90 per cent of female with lung cancer are never-smokers.It added that risk factors include second-hand smoke, environmental pollutants and genetic susceptability.<\/p>\n
Turning to the question on contribution of PM2.5 exposure, Ong noted that international studies have found that PM2.5<\/a> is associated with a higher risk of lung cancer.<\/p>\n However, Ong, who is also Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, also pointed out that this is often after long-term exposure.<\/p>\n PM2.5 measures the concentration of fine particulate matter in the air and refers to tiny particles that can enter the lungs and bloodstream.<\/p>\n It is considered one of the key pollutants affecting human health during haze episodes.<\/p>\n The health minister said that the effect of periodic haze exposure in Singapore will only be known much later when studies are done to correlate environment factors and disease prevalence.<\/p>\n He also explained that environmental exposure is multifactorial, and may be influenced by the mitigating measures taken by an individual and time spent in environments beyond the individual\u2019s residence.<\/p>\n “Smoking remains the top risk factor for lung cancer. Overall cancer risk can also be reduced, such as by smoking cessation, limiting alcohol consumption, and maintaining a healthy diet,” Ong said.<\/p>\n [[nid:745156]]<\/p>\n editor@asiaone.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There is an increasing incidence of lung cancer cases in both male and female never-smokers, said Minister of Health Ong Ye Kung, citing a 2026…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/91375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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