Our Blog

  Yes. You can get lung cancer without ever lighting a cigarette. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ties smoking to about 80 percent of lung cancer deaths. But what if you're in that other 20 percent; the people who show up to their diagnosis with a clean smoking history and a lot of questions? Everybody asks whether you smoked. Doctors, relatives, insurance forms. The question can make it sound as though lung cancer requires a cigarette somewhere in the story. If you have never smoked,[...]

Yes, non-smokers can develop asbestosis because cigarettes have nothing to do with it. Asbestosis is scarring of the lungs with exactly one cause: inhaled asbestos fibers. You could have refused every cigarette ever offered to you and still end up winded at the top of the staircase, wondering why. Some people trace that diagnosis back to years spent in shipyards, construction sites, or factories. Others worked as cosmetologists, hairdressers, or barbers, regularly using cosmetic talc products that were later found to contain asbestos. Decades can pass before symptoms[...]