London: World Health Organization has declared pollutants in the air as leading environmental cause of lung cancer.
The pollutants in the air we breathe has been officially classified as carcinogenic to humans with sources of pollution being car exhausts, power stations, emissions from agriculture and industry, the BBC reported.
According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which has now classed air pollution in the same category as tobacco smoke, UV radiation and plutonium, air pollution had been know to cause heart and lung diseases, but evidence had now emerged that it was also causing cancer.
The agency said that the most recent data suggested 223,000 deaths from lung cancer around the world were caused by air pollution.
The data also suggested that there may also be a link with bladder cancer.
Dr Kurt Straif, from IARC, said that the air we breathe has become polluted with a mixture of cancer-causing substances.
He said that the results suggested that outdoor air pollution is not only a major risk to health in general, but also a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths.
