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Prostate cancer

Exposure to ambient air pollution increases risk

Nature Reviews Urology volume 22, page 197 (2025)Cite this article

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Air pollution has been suggested as a potential modifiable risk factor for prostate cancer, but data remain inconsistent. Now a study of over 210,000 men from a UK biobank suggests that long-term exposure to air pollution increases prostate cancer risk.

Data from 210,722 men who were free of prostate cancer at baseline were collected from the UK Biobank. The mean age of these men was 56.6 years, and 10,841 men were diagnosed with incident prostate cancer during a total of 2,228,981 person-years of follow-up monitoring (median follow-up duration 10.9 years). This information was cross-referenced with air pollution data from the UK government Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, which included ambient air pollutants, such as particulate matter with diameters ≤2.5 μm (PM2.5) and ≤10 μm (PM10), nitrogen oxides (NO2 and NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), benzene and ozone (O3).

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  1. Nature Reviews Urology http://www.nature.com/nrurol/

    Annette Fenner

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  1. Annette Fenner
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Correspondence to Annette Fenner.

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Fenner, A. Exposure to ambient air pollution increases risk. Nat Rev Urol 22, 197 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41585-025-01021-x

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