Risk of lung cancer from traditional heating and cooking fuels in Montreal, Canada.

B63

Among the major sources of indoor air pollution are combustion by-products from heating and cooking. There has been increasing concern that the use of polluting heating and cooking sources can contribute to cancer risk. In Canada, most cooking and heating is now, done with electricity or natural gas, but in the past, and still in some areas, coal and wood stoves were used for heating and gas and wood for cooking. In the course of a case-control study of lung cancer carried out in Montreal in 1996-2000, we collected information on subjects' lifetime exposure to such sources of domestic pollution. The study included both males and females, 1205 cases and 1541 population controls had available for analysis. For male, the uni-variate analysis shows that there were some indications, albeit not statistically significant, that exposure to traditional heating and cooking sources carried some excess risk of lung cancer; but when adjusted with other covariates there was no indication of excess risks. For women, risks adjusted for smoking and other covariates were almost doubled for those exposed to traditional heating and cooking fuels. Given the paucity of evidence from developed countries, our results suggest that there might be an increased risk of lung cancer among women exposed to traditional heating and cooking fuels.