How many asbestos-related lung cancer deaths are there each year?
• Lung cancer deaths caused by asbestos are clinically indistinguishable from those caused by other agents such as tobacco smoke. This means the number of cases cannot be determined by direct counting and must therefore be estimated. • Because of improving evidence, our “best estimate” of the annual number of asbestos-related lung cancers has been revised over the years from “about two lung cancer deaths per mesothelioma each year” before the early 1990s to “one or two” and then to “around one” more recently. • In the past our estimates have largely been based on comparisons of numbers of mesothelioma deaths in studies of groups of asbestos-exposed individuals with numbers of ‘excess’ lung cancers in those groups (how many more lung cancers were observed than would have been expected in the groups if there had been no asbestos exposure). Estimates produced on this basis have always been regarded as uncertain (and still are). • Recent research estimated the ratio of asbestos-related lun
