Living in an environment with high air pollution or working with radioactive minerals or asbestos can also increase the risk of cancer. Research has helped us to understand how these risk factors produce certain changes in the DNA of lung cells. These changes cause the cells to grow abnormally and form cancers.
DNA is the genetic material that carries the instructions for nearly everything our cells do. Some genes (parts of our DNA) contain instructions for controlling when cells grow and divide. The risk factors discussed earlier can trigger changes, also called mutations, in these genes that result in cancer. A risk for some types of cancer (e.g., breast, ovarian, colorectal, and several others) can be inherited from parents. However, inherited gene mutations are not thought to be a cause of very many lung cancers.