Rates of lung cancer increasing among non-smokers, experts say

Health experts say lung cancer rates are on the rise in women who have never smoked.

Friday, August 1st 2025, 1:14 pm

By: Christian Hans

Friday, Aug. 1, is World Lung Cancer Day, a day to raise awareness for the leading cause of cancer death in the United States.

While the number of new cases of lung cancer continues to decrease, due in part to fewer people smoking, rates are increasing in certain groups who are non-smokers.

One woman, Randi Marcus, said she had never smoked before her diagnosis.

"Never smoked a day in my life," Marcus said. "Not even tried it. I felt perfectly healthy. I had no symptoms."

However, the 65-year-old's cancer was an "incidental finding," according to her doctor. A diagnosis that wa spicked up on a text that checks calcium in a patient's arteries.

"The radiologist spotted something on my lung," Marcus said. "10 days later, I was having surgery."

Vice Chairman of Thoracic Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System, Dr. Andrew Kaufma,n says lung cancer in non-smoking patients is different from cancer in smoking patients.

"We don't seem to understand all of the underlying biology, but we do know smoking-related lung cancer is distinctly different from never smoking lung cancer," Kaufman said. "There are different genetic changes that occur between those two different groups."

Kaufman says a main driver, especially for Asian women, is the non-inherited EGFR gene mutation, which tests showed Marcus also has.

"We're not sure why it's happening," Kaufman said. "We think it's most likely a combination of either a genetic predisposition for a mutation occurring, but also environmental factors such as air pollution"

Marcus says she was lucky her cancer was detected when it was.

"I was very, very lucky that it was caught like this," Marcus says.

With the cancer detected early, Marcus underwent surgery to remove the tumor and part of her lung and did not need any other treatment.

"People think, 'Well, I never smoked, how would I ever get lung cancer? How could that be?'" Marcus said. "I think that it's very important to raise awareness, especially in younger women."