In the United States, someone is diagnosed with lung cancer every 2½ minutes.
Notes on verification
Confirmed by multiple American Lung Association 'State of Lung Cancer' reports (2018-2022) which explicitly state this figure. Note the statistic is time-varying; more recent ALA reports (2024-2025) cite 'every two minutes' instead, so the 2.5-minute figure reflects slightly older but still officially published data.
Sources
- Anyone With Lungs Can Get Lung Cancer (newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org)
- https://www.lung.org/getmedia/647c433b-4cbc-4be6-9312-2fa9a449d489/solc-2022-print-report (lung.org)
- https://www.lung.org/getmedia/381ca407-a4e9-4069-b24b-195811f29a00/SOLC-2020- (lung.org)
- https://www.naaccr.org/2018-state-lung-cancer-report/ (naaccr.org)
- https://www.lung.org/blog/facts-about-lung-cancer (lung.org)