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So now we know.   Air pollution does cause cancer.  At least, in China and other rapidly developing countries like Addis Ababa, where the fumes from bulldozers to minibuses creating all this growth daily "pump out black plumes" according to Tyler Falk of smartplanet.com. And these plumes -- the outdoor air pollution that "plagues urban areas from Ethiopia to China -- are causing lung cancer. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has officially labeled outdoor air pollution as a leading cause of cancer [PDF] after reviewing 1,000 scientific papers on the subject from five continents," writes Falk. And it kills 223,000 people a year, who die from lung cancer as a result of breathing in the polluted air. “The air we breathe has become polluted with a mixture of cancer-causing substances,” Falk quotes Kurt Straif, head of IARC's Monographs Section. “We now know that outdoor air pollution is not only a major risk to ...

It's weird how things happen.  Last night at a dinner party I was talking to a woman from Britain (after we got all the royal baby stuff out of the way) about what it used to be like in pubs and restaurants, before all the No Smoking laws went into effect. And today in The Wall Street Journal, there's a story about the 10th anniversary of their enforcement in NYC.  The Associated Press goes on to say, "Few measures in Albany changed life in New York more." Would you believe the number of smokers trying to quite during that time increased to 65%, according to Blair Horner, vice president of advocacy at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the AP notes? I'd have to agree.  I've never smoked (finally, I'm in the 1% of something!), but my mother did, and I hated the smell of smoke in the house and the ashtrays, and the cloud of smoke in bars when I was hanging out, looking for a mate.  The Brit remembered a couch that turned b...