Exclusive: Health experts and cancer charities say findings should serve as wake-up call to ministers

More than 1,100 people a year in the UK are developing the most prevalent form of lung cancer as a result of air pollution, the Guardian can reveal.

Exposure to toxic air was attributed to 515 men and 590 women in the UK in 2022 getting adenocarcinoma – now the most dominant of the four main subtypes of lung cancer – an analysis by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency found.

The UK rates of adenocarcinoma cases linked to ambient particulate matter pollution were also higher than in the US and Canada, and four times higher than Finland, which had the lowest rates in northern Europe, according to the analysis.