This nation has the fastest rising rate of cancer cases — and deaths — in the world
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Ali Mokdad stands in the heart of Beirut. Cars and trucks and motorcycles rumble everywhere.
"If you look at a car passing by, you see smoke coming out of it — that's illegal in Lebanon. But nobody enforce[s] it," says Mokda, the chief strategy officer of population health at the University of Washington.
As a result, Beirut has terrible air quality and is often submerged under a blanket of exhaust. And it's not just in the big cities — vehicles belch pollution across the country.
It's one reason that cancer is surging in Lebanon. Mokdad co-authored a global survey that revealed that the tiny nation on the Mediterranean is experiencing the fastest increase in cancer incidence and mortality anywhere in the world.
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