Where your DNA places you among other people, and the studies behind it.
Not tailored to your result, and not medical advice
Quit or Avoid Tobacco Smoke: Tobacco causes about 9 out of 10 lung cancers in men and about 8 out of 10 in women, and people who smoke carry roughly 20 times the risk of people who do not. The damage is cumulative and dose-related, but it is partly reversible. NCI reports that ten years after stopping, lung cancer risk is 30% to 60% lower than for people who keep smoking, although it does not fall all the way back to never-smoker levels. No other single behavior change moves lung cancer risk anywhere near as much. National Cancer Institute (PDQ)
Test Your Home for Radon: Radon is a colourless radioactive gas that seeps out of soil and collects indoors, and the EPA attributes about 21,000 US lung cancer deaths a year to it. The EPA calls it the number one cause of lung cancer among people who do not smoke, and the second leading cause overall. It also compounds tobacco damage: at a household level of 4 pCi/L, EPA estimates about 62 lung cancer cases per 1,000 people exposed over a lifetime among smokers, against about 7 per 1,000 among never-smokers. Home test kits are cheap, and the EPA advises fixing houses that measure 4 pCi/L or higher. US EPA
Keep Your Air Smoke-Free: Secondhand smoke exposure caused more than 7,300 lung cancer deaths a year among US adult nonsmokers during 2005 to 2009, according to the Surgeon General estimate NCI cites. NCI states plainly that there is no safe level of exposure and that even low levels of secondhand smoke can be harmful. Homes, workplaces and vehicles are the settings where people spend the longest exposed, which is where smoke-free rules make the largest difference. National Cancer Institute
Limit Polluted Air and Dust: A 2025 systematic review of lung cancer in people who never smoked found long-term fine particulate exposure associated with 16% higher incidence (adjusted HR 1.16, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.30) across seven studies of 839,168 people, with PM10 at adjusted HR 1.10 across two studies. The same review put secondhand smoke at adjusted HR 1.30 across six studies, and workplace exposure to hazardous substances at adjusted HR 1.29, though that last figure rests on a single study of 794,283 workers. These are observational associations rather than proof of cause, but the exposures are ones you can often reduce - checking local air quality before outdoor exercise, ventilating indoor smoke and fumes, and actually using the dust and respiratory protection a workplace provides. JTO Clinical and Research Reports (PMC)
Do Not Count on Supplements: Beta-carotene was the most seriously studied attempt to prevent lung cancer with a supplement, and it backfired. A 2022 meta-analysis of eight randomised trials in 167,141 participants found supplementation associated with higher lung cancer risk (RR 1.16, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.26), rising to RR 1.21 among smokers and asbestos-exposed workers, with no protective effect at any dose studied. This is the honest limit of lifestyle prevention for this trait. Beyond avoiding tobacco smoke, radon and airborne carcinogens, no diet or supplement has been convincingly shown to prevent lung cancer, and whether any lung screening test is relevant to you is a conversation for a clinician rather than something a genetic score can settle. Nutrients (PMC)
How much of this is genetic?
Genetics explains 18% of why people differ in this trait. The rest is environment, daily habits and chance.
Heritability estimate: Mucci et al. 2016, JAMA
Background and further reading
Lung cancer is a malignant tumor arising in the tissues of the lung, most often from the cells lining the airways. It is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. The two broad types are non-small cell lung cancer, which accounts for roughly 85% of cases, and the more aggressive small cell lung cancer. Symptoms such as a persistent cough, coughing up blood, chest pain, breathlessness, and unexplained weight loss often appear only once the disease is advanced, which is part of why outcomes have historically been poor. Because it is so strongly tied to a single modifiable exposure, tobacco smoke, lung cancer is also one of the most preventable common cancers.
Genetic Basis: Lung cancer has notably low heritability compared with most other cancers. Large twin studies place the inherited contribution at roughly 8-18%, meaning the great majority of variation in who develops the disease reflects behavior and environment rather than genes. The best-studied inherited signal lies in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor gene cluster on chromosome 15q25 (CHRNA5, CHRNA3, CHRNB4); variants here are linked both to how heavily and readily a person smokes and to lung cancer itself. Other loci implicate telomere maintenance (TERT on 5p15.33), the TP63 tumor-suppressor pathway on 3q28, and, in some families, rare variants in genes such as BRCA2 and CHEK2. A polygenic score sums many such common variants into a single relative estimate.
Environmental Factors: Tobacco smoking is by far the dominant cause, responsible for the large majority of cases, and the risk falls substantially in the years after quitting. Radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas that can accumulate indoors, is the second leading cause and the leading cause among people who have never smoked; home radon testing and mitigation are inexpensive. Other established contributors include secondhand smoke, outdoor air pollution, and occupational exposures such as asbestos, arsenic, diesel exhaust, and certain metals. Because these exposures so heavily outweigh inherited factors, a genetic score is a minor piece of the overall picture next to whether and how much a person is exposed to tobacco smoke and other carcinogens.
The published research behind your score, and the variants it draws on.
9 published scores from 4 studies
The lung cancer score combines 9 polygenic scores drawn from 4 published studies.
These traits are influenced by some of the same genes and variants as this one
Venous Thromboembolism: Blood clots that form in the deep veins and can travel to the lungs.
Body Mass Index: A measure of body weight relative to height, used as a proxy for overall adiposity.
Content updated August 2026.
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