Amazing. Is it possible women spend more time in homes with elevated radon levels? Or how is it possible that that thought didn't occur to anyone researching this.

I just sent an email to the author of the article. I suggest you all do the same.

Great idea! I just did!

They spent more time developing the graphic than the contents.

What a shame. I sent an email as well encouraging a follow up article for Radon Action Month.

great suggestion Terry

Great Idea Terry. My e-mail to Ms. Ducharme included that suggestion also.

Mine did, too!

Thanks, Chrystine, for pointing out the article. Re-read it, and realized the author was hot to write about genetic research into cancer. That was the point and scope of his/her article. His 'hook', though, the example to interest you in reading the rest of the article, was the author's undoing. A woman who never smoked getting lung cancer might be an example of why genetic research into mutations is important, but we all know of a better explanation. The article wasn't on all the risk factors for cancer, though, but an update on new genetic research. Jamie Ducharme chose this example and title poorly. Still the author is now "on the hook", you might say. Great idea to ask him/her to atone by writing an article on Radon! Don't look for it this January, though. The topics Time will publish are laid out typically a year ahead, and submitting and review take months. The author could write the best article ever and it would likely be 2021 before it was published. Still, great idea, hats off to Terry.

I thought I would answer Chrys's question "How is it possible that radon is not even mentioned in this article??" in at least one way:

Here's how:

The TIME article is drawn heavily from the submission by Jemal et al.: Higher Lung Cancer Incidence in Young Women Than Young Men in the United States (in NEJM at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1715907 ) which itself does not address the role that exposures to radon relative to gender may play.

Indeed, although that analysis does include a brief discussion on "Factors other than active tobacco use," I was surprised (and disappointed) that the authors included nothing about radon even at that juncture, while naming other known risk factors. While the piece is primarily a statistical exercise and not something designed to tease out the effects of various influences on cancer rates, I was left to wonder if the NEJM reviewers also did not recommend that the authors address the role of radon.

In this context, we might perhaps blame the TIME reporter Jamie Ducharme somewhat less for this omission, and recognize that there's still a lot of work to do to educate the medical and scientific community about the second leading cause of lung cancer.