Workers involved in mustard-gas production during the World War II era showed heightened odds of lung cancer at a relatively young age — with the excess risk fading in old age, a new study finds.
Japanese researchers found that of workers employed at a poisonous-gas factory between 1929 and 1945, those directly involved in producing mustard gas saw their risk of lung cancer, while still rare, increase earlier in life compared with other workers.
For each year of exposure to mustard gas, workers’ lung cancer risk increased three to five years earlier, the researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.