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On the Front Lines of the War Against 'Super Lice' | The Local
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 5:42 PM

The Local

For C., the nightmare started as a head-scratcher. While she was making her 11-year-old son an after-school snack on a Wednesday this past April, she noticed that he was idly raking his nails through his hair. C. (who asked that we not use her full name to protect her family’s privacy and her business) wasn’t particularly fussed, but the gesture was unusual enough that she clocked it. She was brushing her teeth before bed when her son poked his head into the bathroom. “He said, ‘Mom, my head is itchy!”

C, who grew up in northern Ontario and now lives in Toronto, has long harboured a fear of all things bug-related. But a few years ago, she made a conscious decision to try to stop being afraid. “So I’m not anymore,” says C., a dedicated mindfulness practitioner. “But because I’ve always dreaded that this day might come, I had lice kits sitting in a drawer.”

The kits came out; her kid’s head went under the tap. At first, there were no visible signs of an infestation. But after she dried his hair, C. spotted them: lice, speckled across the towel. The bathroom became “Lice Central,” as she puts it, effectively a HAZMAT containment unit where C. assiduously picked through strands; meanwhile, her husband strode through the house tossing bedding into garbage bags as a precaution. Her son wept, worried he’d have to cut off all his long hair. C. tried to reassure him. “But internally, I was like, ‘Oh my god, I think we just should all shave our heads,’” she says. The rest of the night was consumed by frantic shampooing and slathering scalps with over-the-counter treatments; at one point, C., her husband, their son, and their 13-year-old daughter swaddled their heads in Saran wrap to help the stuff sink in.

The family spent the next few days in an endless comb-medicate-wash-check-repeat circuit. Nearly a week (and countless thorough nit scans) after the initial sighting, C. eased up on the regimen. But a couple weeks later, while the family was out for pizza on a Friday night, C. idly glanced at her daughter’s hair, “and I just had this feeling in my stomach,” she says. She did a thorough check once they got home, and lo and behold: the lice had come back. C. resumed the regimen, which she diligently kept up through tears (her own and her kids’) for the next 14 days.

Up to that point, C. says, she’d managed to hive off her personal life from her business as a fitness trainer. Lice is spread through hair-to-hair contact—the pests can’t fly or leap from head to head. But the sense of helplessness—and the worry, unfounded or not, that she might become a vector and infect clients—subsumed her capacity for compartmentalization. “I was like, Oh, fuck. All these people are gonna be like, ‘Why can’t this chick get lice out of her house? Is it at the gym?’” She shut down her gym for a week, stating simply that a family matter had come up that required her attention. While C. felt confident she hadn’t put anyone at risk, she was mortified by the idea of others knowing about what she perceived as a dirty little secret, and worried that it might affect her clients’ willingness to work with her. “But I also couldn’t put it out there because I was feeling so alarmed and embarrassed,” she says. It was a deeply alienating experience, C. says, though she recognizes the inherent irony: she was very much not alone.

Head lice, or Pediculus humanus capitis, is a developmental rite of passage. Those of us who are now old enough to have our own elementary school-aged kids may remember squirming under the watchful eyes of our peers as a public health nurse combed through our hair, praying she didn’t spot a rogue nit. Today, those regular checks no longer happen as a matter of course, but that doesn’t mean the bugs have been banished—ask any parent who’s gone numb upon receipt of a formal notice from daycare, or school, or camp.

That reflexive panic is understandable. As C. can attest, contending with head lice is, at best, a major nuisance with the potential to derail one’s life (albeit temporarily). But as sickening as the experience might be, the itchy pests don’t actually make us sick, which has ramifications. The Canadian Paediatric Society’s official position (developed in 2008 and updated several times since) is that head lice are “not a primary health hazard or a vector for disease, but they are a societal problem with substantial costs.”

The issue with a societal problem is that nobody wants to be accountable for dealing with it—or even documenting its existence. Indeed, Toronto Public Health (TPH) responded to my queries with an emailed statement that it “does not collect data on reports of head lice, as they are not listed as a communicable disease under Ontario’s Health Protection and Promotion Act” and, as a result, there “is no requirement/mandate for public health units to address head lice infestations.” When I reached out to Public Health Ontario’s medical and veterinary entomology department (which includes specialists in zoonotic diseases), a media rep suggested I contact “a local public health unit like Toronto Public Health.” My contact at TPH shared a link to the SickKids headlice explainer and a bullet-point list of tips such as encouraging children not to share hats or headphones, vacuuming, and using “individual well-spaced coat hooks or lockers.”

That advice might have been useful back when Millennials were trying to avoid catching cooties, but it seems somewhat absurd in the context of classrooms packed to the gills with students. Similarly, the treatments that might have worked on ‘90s-era nits—mostly topical insecticides from the drugstore like Nix—are no longer effective on their 2025 counterparts, as C. discovered. These tenacious new Pediculus specimens are seemingly unkillable, somewhat stealthy, and quick to proliferate, which is why they’ve come to be known as super-lice.

If you’ve not encountered them in the flesh (or embedded in family members’ follicles), it may be tempting to dismiss super-lice as a sensationalist effort to capitalize on the fears of neurotic parents. That’s not the case, says Jean-Paul Paluzzi, an associate professor in the biology department at York University who specializes in insect molecular physiology. As he notes, there’s a robust (and growing) body of evidence to suggest that this issue is a legitimate concern.

Similar to antimicrobial resistance—a looming global threat—the waning efficacy of lice treatments that used to be a slam-dunk is an example of evolution in action. Specifically, lice that can withstand topical treatments such as Nix, Pronto, and Rid carry a genetic mutation that makes them less susceptible to permethrin (a pesticide used in many conventional lice treatments) and other members of the pyrethrin insecticide family. Paluzzi notes that this phenomenon extends well beyond the boundaries of the GTA, citing several studies conducted over the past few decades. One 2010 survey of lice from cities in Ontario, Quebec, and B.C. found insecticide-resistant mutations in more than 97 percent of the bugs tested; a more recent meta-analysis revealed that lice in Australia, England, Turkey, and Israel had “100 percent resistant gene frequencies.”

Given that the drugs don’t work, the only viable debugging option is mechanical removal and surveillance—that is, adopting a primate’s steely rigour and using a literal fine-toothed comb to tease out both the lice and their future offspring. The first step is extricating the big bugs, which are easiest to spot. The eggs are trickier—they’re whitish-yellow, tear-shaped, and a couple millimetres long, like tiny sesame seeds, and can easily be confused with dandruff. They hatch in seven to 10 days, and then it takes another seven to 10 days for those newly hatched babies to reach maturity, which is why a regimen involves more than a one-time treatment. It’s a painstaking, glacially slow process that must be repeated, often over multiple weeks. The combo of focus, patience, and free hours is daunting for most parents—not to mention the horrifying prospect of having to restart the whole routine if you miss a few stray eggs that hatch into a new colony.

Like so many other mildly unpleasant to downright gross tasks in the personal care/domestic oversight realm (see: waxing, seasonal backyard dog poop removal), this one has fueled burgeoning demand for skilled professionals to just deal with it. In response, expert nit-pickers have set up storefronts, where they offer their services, often using proprietary methods, in spaces that typically have the hygienic, preschool ambiance of a pediatric dentist’s office. Lice removal has become a booming business, catering to harried, suspiciously itchy parents who are willing to pay for relief.

A standard full removal service at a Toronto-area clinic can range from $75 to $95 per head, per hour. Some providers offer complimentary follow-up checks within a week of treatment; some offer free screenings for other family members when one person books a full removal. Depending on the size of your household and the hair volume of the members of that household, the cost can be hefty. But when you find yourself in desperate need of a professional lice-remover’s services, it can feel like the best money you’ve ever spent.

I speak from experience. In the summer of 2019, my family had its first (and, to date, only—knock wood) encounter with lice. By the time an official notice came home from the daycare my children attended, it was too late: the itch had set in. I remember feeling panic, and then a kind of psychological paralysis. Unlike C., we hadn’t proactively stocked up on lice-removal kits, and I had little faith in my own ability to effectively identify and extricate every single bug, nit, and egg. Outsourcing seemed like the only answer.

Within 24 hours, my co-parent, our two kids, then five and two, and I were beelining across the city to the Scarborough strip mall that houses the Toronto clinic run by Nitwits, a lice-removal service. Inside, it was bright and pristine, with well-spaced barbershop chairs facing small vanities, a bit like a minimalist version of the kiddie hair salon Melonheads—albeit with screens in place of the wall mirrors. And other than the exuberant sounds of the Paw Patrol episodes distracting the squirmy kids in those chairs from the spritzing and combing and strand-by-strand surveillance that was happening around their heads, it was relatively peaceful. I lapsed into a sort of meditative reverie once it was my turn in the chair—the deep relief of having surrendered this responsibility to the hands of experts. The total cost for our family of four was $490, which was a significant strain on our daycare-stretched budget. But as we left, with mint-scented essential oil spray, a clear regimen, and the option of a free follow-up check over the next seven days, I recall how grateful I was for that guidance.

The dearth of practical support for families grappling with this issue is what prompted Dawn Mucci to go into the nit-picking business. Mucci, who lives in the Barrie area, got lice “a lot” as a kid, much to the dismay of her single dad, who tried his best with the flimsy combs and chemical insecticides he could find at the drugstore. When Mucci’s own son inevitably brought lice home from daycare, it triggered some core trauma. “I went right back to that negative space of feeling stigmatized and frustrated and scared,” she says. Mucci visited a local public health department, hoping the nurse there could provide some peace of mind—as a single mom, she was desperate to have another adult check her head. “She said, ‘We don’t deal with this anymore because Health Canada says it’s not a medical issue. Go to the drugstore, buy some pesticide, follow the instructions and you’ll be fine.’” Mucci left the office in tears, but her distress resonated with the nurse, who chased her down outside and offered to do a covert inspection in the bathroom. “At that point,” Mucci says, “I realized I would pay any amount of money for someone to just help me with this.”

She began exploring different techniques and aromatherapy-based natural deterrents, figured out how to successfully treat herself and her son, and began offering her services to other Toronto-area parents. This was the early aughts—pre–social media—but the demand was there, and word spread. “I started getting really busy,” Mucci says. “I’d take my little suitcase on the bus and go house to house, helping families.” That bedroom enterprise became Lice Squad, which Mucci founded in 2001; she’s since opened several locations throughout Ontario and has franchised clinics and contractors across Canada.

Personal experience was also what inspired Shawnda Walker to start Nitwits. When her younger daughter, now 20, was sent home from junior kindergarten with lice, Walker tried a slew of at-home lice-removal kits and came up empty–handed. Increasingly aggravated, she threw herself into a research rabbit hole and eventually found the Shepherd Institute, a Florida-based organization with a trademarked lice-removal method. Walker, who was working in corporate marketing at the time, was struck by the company’s approach: “It’s not just teaching you how to get rid of lice, it’s really teaching you the science of lice,” she says. “Once you know the science, the whole process makes sense.”

She went down, got trained, and 15 years later, Nitwits is going strong. In that time, Walker has seen some extreme situations. A female louse can lay 10 eggs a day, and things can get out of control quickly. She’s helped people who’ve come in with thousands of bugs and thousands upon thousands of eggs, which can take as many as 10 hours to fully remove. Still, in a decade and a half, Walker has only had to shave one head.

It’s hard to determine the size of our super-lice issue because, as noted, Pediculus humanus doesn’t fall under the purview of public health, which means there are no concrete numbers available. The Canadian Paediatric Society is oddly dismissive of the super-lice phenomenon. Although its official position statement does touch on non-insecticidal approaches to managing infestations, the organization presents permethrin and pyrethrins as the unequivocal first-line treatments, only recommending other options if those fail—despite noting that “an increasing resistance” to the products has been documented.

If you ask the people on the follicular frontlines, super-lice have been creeping up on us for at least the past decade—it takes some time for treatment-resistant outliers to reach critical mass. Shawnda Walker has seen a significant increase in cases among 12 to 18 year-olds. “Last year, our numbers were 13 percent higher than our busiest year in history.”

In 2001, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) adopted a policy wherein any student found to have lice would be sent home, with the expectation that the problem would be fully treated and the bugs would be banished before they were permitted back in class. From an epidemiological standpoint, that approach seems to make sense—isolate the infectious agent, minimize the spread. But it has its detractors. Since 2008, the CPS has maintained that there is no “sound medical rationale” for keeping kids with lice out of school. One very vocal public health entomologist from Harvard has spent most of the past two decades criticizing lice bans.

This lack of consensus has led to a lack of consistency, even between different school boards in Ontario. In 2012, the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board voted to let students with nits stay at school; the Thames Valley District School Board publicly reassessed its guidelines in 2019, which prompted the TDSB to consider revisiting its own policy. Residual twitchiness from parental backlash to the mandatory absences and shutdowns during peak COVID will likely prompt further changes.

Technically, the TDSB has a Pediculosis Program, with its own designated coordinator, but like many other aspects of the system, the resources hardly cover student needs. A few years back, Walker visited one school less than a week after a roving public-health nurse had screened the whole school for lice. Her team found 15 cases. Recently, she’s noticed more pushback against private companies such as Nitwits coming to do lice checks, even when their services are funded by in-school parent councils. “We’re still doing TDSB schools, but it’s probably 60 percent less than pre-COVID.” Walker is sympathetic to the challenges—unless you’re picking nits all day, every day, it’s easy to miss a few—and recognizes that there’s an equity issue at play: not all schools have parent councils with the capacity to hire contractors.

When someone shows up at a lice removal clinic, they’re looking for a kind of support that extends beyond simply picking nits. As Mucci and Walker point out, people panic about lice because it still carries tremendous stigma, even though it’s incredibly common. C. eventually came clean with her clients, but only once she realized her frazzled mental state would compromise her ability to be present in a professional capacity. “Everyone was like, ‘I’m so sorry—take all the time you need,’” she says. “But that brought up so much self-consciousness and shame,” she says.

Lice can be cultural shorthand for poor hygiene and neglect, even though hygiene has nothing to do with the likelihood that one will become afflicted; it’s freighted with countless racist and classist assumptions. Professional lice-removal services help cut through those assumptions by normalizing the issue and separating it from the haze of flawed associations.

After C. told people about her nit nightmare, they started commiserating. One mom texted in a frenzy one morning to announce that her own kid had lice. C. immediately launched into a litany of what to get, where to stash the combs, how to colour-code the gear for different family members. “She was like ‘Are you insane?’” C. remembers. “‘Why would you decide to take this all on yourself rather than going to see an expert?” It was, C. says, a real “Aha!” moment. Grappling with lice helped illuminate bigger existential challenges. Why didn’t she trust anyone to help her deal with this problem? Was she trying to fix it herself as a kind of absolution for letting it happen in the first place?

“Super-lice is an alarming and important public health issue, but there’s something social and psychological and philosophical happening here on the level of family and the pace at which we live our lives,” she says. “We think we’re so evolved, but all of a sudden something like this happens, and it causes you to rethink who you are, how you live.” Eventually, at the urging of her husband, C. wound up at Lice Squad. “He said ‘You’re a hero for doing this, but also, let’s get a professional.”

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Epiphyte City

Irish tourist jailed by Ice for months after overstaying US visit by three days: ‘Nobody is safe’ | US immigration | The Guardian
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 5:32 PM

The Guardian

Thomas, a 35-year-old tech worker and father of three from Ireland, came to West Virginia to visit his girlfriend last fall. It was one of many trips he had taken to the US, and he was authorized to travel under a visa waiver program that allows tourists to stay in the country for 90 days.

He had planned to return to Ireland in December, but was briefly unable to fly due to a health issue, his medical records show. He was only three days overdue to leave the US when an encounter with police landed him in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody.

From there, what should have been a minor incident became a nightmarish ordeal: he was detained by Ice in three different facilities, ultimately spending roughly 100 days behind bars with little understanding of why he was being held – or when he’d get out.

“Nobody is safe from the system if they get pulled into it,” said Thomas, in a recent interview from his home in Ireland, a few months after his release. Thomas asked to be identified by a nickname out of fear of facing further consequences with US immigration authorities.

Despite immediately agreeing to deportation when he was first arrested, Thomas remained in Ice detention after Donald Trump took office and dramatically ramped up immigration arrests. Amid increased overcrowding in detention, Thomas was forced to spend part of his time in custody in a federal prison for criminal defendants, even though he was being held on an immigration violation.

Thomas was sent back to Ireland in March and was told he was banned from entering the US for 10 years.

Thomas’s ordeal follows a rise in reports of tourists and visitors with valid visas being detained by Ice, including from Australia, Germany, Canada and the UK. In April, an Irish woman who is a US green card holder was also detained by Ice for 17 days due to a nearly two-decade-old criminal record.

The arrests appear to be part of a broader crackdown by the Trump administration, which has pushed to deport students with alleged ties to pro-Palestinian protests; sent detainees to Guantánamo Bay and an El Salvador prison without presenting evidence of criminality; deported people to South Sudan, a war-torn country where the deportees had no ties; and escalated large-scale, militarized raids across the US.

‘I thought I was going home’

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Thomas detailed his ordeal and the brutal conditions he witnessed in detention that advocates say have long plagued undocumented people and become worse under Trump.

Thomas, an engineer at a tech firm, had never had any problems visiting the US under the visa waiver program. He had initially planned to return home in October, but badly tore his calf, suffered severe swelling and was having trouble walking, he said. A doctor ordered him not to travel for eight to 12 weeks due to the risk of blood clots, which, he said, meant he had to stay slightly past 8 December, when his authorization expired.

He obtained paperwork from his physician and contacted the Irish and US embassies and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to seek an extension, but it was short notice and he did not hear back, he said.

“I did everything I could with the online tools available to notify the authorities that this was happening,” he said, explaining that by the time his deadline to leave the US had approached, he was nearly healed and planning to soon return. “I thought they would understand because I had the correct paperwork. It was just a couple of days for medical reasons.”

He might have avoided immigration consequences, if it weren’t for an ill-timed law enforcement encounter.

Thomas and his girlfriend, Malone, were visiting her family in Savannah, Georgia, when Thomas suffered a mental health episode, he and Malone recalled. The two had a conflict in their hotel room and someone overheard it and called the police, they said.

Malone, who requested to use her middle name to protect her boyfriend’s identity, said she was hoping officers would get him treatment and did not want to see him face criminal charges. But police took him to jail, accusing him of “falsely imprisoning” his girlfriend in the hotel room, a charge Malone said she did not support. He was soon released on bond, but instead of walking free, was picked up by US immigration authorities, who transported him 100 miles away to an Ice processing center in Folkston, Georgia. The facility is operated by the private prison company Geo Group on behalf of Ice, with capacity to hold more than 1,000 people.

Thomas was given a two-page removal order, which said he had remained in the US three days past his authorization and contained no further allegations. On 17 December, he signed a form agreeing to be removed.

But despite signing the form he remained at Folkston, unable to get answers about why Ice wasn’t deporting him or how long he would remain in custody. David Cheng, an attorney who represented Thomas, said he requested that Ice release him with an agreement that he’d return to Ireland as planned, but Ice refused.

At one point at Folkston, after a fight broke out, officers placed detainees on lockdown for about five days, cutting them off from contacting their families, he said. Thomas said he and others only got approximately one hour of outdoor time each week.

In mid-February, after about two months in detention, officers placed him and nearly 50 other detainees in a holding cell, preparing to move them, he said: “I thought I was finally going home.” He called his family to tell them the news.

Instead, he and the others were shackled around their wrists, waists and legs and transported four hours to a federal correctional institution in Atlanta, a prison run by the US Bureau of Prisons (BoP), he said.

BoP houses criminal defendants on federal charges, but the Trump administration, as part of its efforts to expand Ice detention, has been increasingly placing immigrants into BoP facilities – a move that advocates say has led to chaos, overcrowding and violations of detainees’ rights.

‘We were treated less than human’

Thomas said the conditions and treatment by BoP were worse than Ice detention: “They were not prepared for us whatsoever.”

He and other detainees were placed in an area with dirty mattresses, cockroaches and mice, where some bunkbeds lacked ladders, forcing people to climb to the top bed, he said.

BoP didn’t seem to have enough clothes, said Thomas, who got a jumpsuit but no shirt. The facility also gave him a pair of used, ripped underwear with brown stains. Some jumpsuits appeared to have bloodstains and holes, he added.

Each detainee was given one toilet paper roll a week. He shared a cell with another detainee, and he said they were only able to flush the toilet three times an hour. He was often freezing and was given only a thin blanket. The food was “disgusting slop”, including some kind of mysterious meat that at times appeared to have chunks of bones and other inedible items mixed in, he said. He was frequently hungry.

“The staff didn’t know why we were there and they were treating us exactly as they would treat BoP prisoners, and they told us that,” Thomas said. “We were treated less than human.”

He and others requested medical visits, but were never seen by physicians, he said: “I heard people crying for doctors, saying they couldn’t breathe, and staff would just say, ‘Well, I’m not a doctor,’ and walk away.” He did eventually receive the psychiatric medication he requested, but staff would throw his pill under his cell door, and he’d sometimes have to search the floor to find it.

Detainees, he said, were given recreation time in an enclosure that was partially open to fresh air, but resembled an indoor cage: “You couldn’t see the outside whatsoever. I didn’t see the sky for weeks.” He had sciatica from an earlier hip injury and said he began experiencing “unbearable” nerve pain as a result of the lack of movement.

Thomas said it seemed Ice’s placements in the BoP facility were arbitrary and poorly planned. Of the nearly 50 people taken from Ice to BoP facility, about 30 of them were transferred back to Folkston a week later, and the following week, two from that group were once again returned to the BoP facility, he said.

In the BoP facility, he said, Ice representatives would show up once a week to talk to detainees. Detainees would crowd around Ice officials and beg for case updates or help. Ice officers spoke Spanish and English, but Middle Eastern and North African detainees who spoke neither were stuck in a state on confusion. “It was pandemonium,” Thomas said.

Thomas said he saw a BoP guard tear up “watching the desperation of the people trying to talk to Ice and find out what was happening”, and that this officer tried to assist people as best as she could. Thomas and Malone tried to help asylum seekers and others he met at the BoP facility by connecting them to advocates.

Thomas was also unable to speak to his children, because there was no way to make international calls. “I don’t know how I made it through,” he said.

In mid-March, Thomas was briefly transferred again to a different Ice facility. The authorities did not explain what had changed, but two armed federal officers then escorted him on a flight back to Ireland.

The DHS and Ice did not respond to inquiries, and a spokesperson for the Geo Group declined to comment.

Donald Murphy, a BoP spokesperson, confirmed that Thomas had been in the bureau’s custody, but did not comment about his case or conditions at the Atlanta facility. The BoP is now housing Ice detainees in eight of its prisons and would “continue to support our law enforcement partners to fulfill the administration’s policy objectives”, Murphy added.

‘This will be a lifelong burden’

It’s unclear why Thomas was jailed for so long for a minor immigration violation.

“It seems completely outlandish that they would detain someone for three months because he overstayed a visa for a medical reason,” said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project, who is not involved in his case and was provided a summary by the Guardian. “It is such a waste of time and money at a time when we’re hearing constantly about how the government wants to cut expenses. It seems like a completely incomprehensible, punitive detention.”

Ice, she added, was “creating its own crisis of overcrowding”.

Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel with the National Immigration Law Center, also not involved in the case, said, in general, it was not uncommon for someone to remain in immigration custody even after they’ve accepted a removal order and that she has had European clients shocked to learn they can face serious consequences for briefly overstaying a visa.

Ice, however, had discretion to release Thomas with an agreement that he’d return home instead of keeping him indefinitely detained, she said. The Trump administration, she added, has defaulted to keeping people detained without weighing individual factors of their cases: “Now it’s just, do we have a bed?”

Republican lawmakers in Georgia last year also passed state legislation requiring police to alert immigration authorities when an undocumented person is arrested, which could have played a role in Thomas being flagged to Ice, said Samantha Hamilton, staff attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, a non-profit group that advocates for immigrants’ rights. She met Thomas on a legal visit at the BoP Atlanta facility.

Hamilton said she was particularly concerned about immigrants of color who are racially profiled and pulled over by police, but Thomas’s ordeal was a reminder that so many people are vulnerable. “The mass detentions are terrifying and it makes me afraid for everyone,” she said.

Thomas had previously traveled to the US frequently for work, but now questions if he’ll ever be allowed to return. “This will be a lifelong burden,” he said.

Malone, his girlfriend, said she plans to move to Ireland to live with him. “It’s not an option for him to come here and I don’t want to be in America anymore,” she said.

Since his return, Thomas said he has had a hard time sleeping and processing what happened: “I’ll never forget it, and it’ll be a long time before I’ll be able to even start to unpack everything I went through. It still doesn’t feel real. When I think about it, it’s like a movie I’m watching.” He said he has also struggled with long-term health problems that he attributes to malnutrition and inappropriate medications he was given while detained.

He was shaken by reports of people sent away without due process. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if I ended up at Guantánamo Bay or El Salvador, because it was so disorganized,” he said. “I was just at the mercy of the federal government.”

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Epiphyte City

Out-of-control rents - CCPA
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 4:21 PM

CCPA

OUT-OF-CONTROL RENTS PDF Download

Across Canada, rents are out of control.

Housing costs for tenants have become untethered from wages. Even tenants earning decent income find that adequate, affordable housing for themselves and their families is out of reach.

In 2019, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives introduced the concept of the “rental wage” to Canada. The rental wage is the hourly wage required to pay rent while working a 40-hour week, 52 weeks a year, and spending no more than 30 per cent of one’s income on housing. Put simply, the rental wage is the wage people need to earn in order to pay their rent without sacrificing other basic needs.

The 2019 CCPA report examined almost 800 neighbourhoods in Canada and found that the rental wage in most of them was much higher than the local minimum wage. An updated version of the report in 2023 found that the gap had increased.

This 2024 edition of the report presents October 2023 data for all provinces, 62 urban areas, and 787 neighbourhoods. The authors focus on average rents for two-bedroom units, which represent 49 per cent of all purpose-built rentals, and one-bedroom units, which represent 35 per cent.

The rental wage is considerably higher than the minimum wage in every province. The gap between the minimum wage and one-bedroom rental wages varies from $1.79 per hour ($15 vs. $16.79) in Newfoundland and Labrador to $13.21 per hour ($16.75 vs. $29.96 per hour) in B.C. Quebec has the smallest gap between the minimum wage and the two-bedroom rental wage, but even there, workers need to earn $4.79 more per hour ($15.25 vs. $20.04) to afford a unit without spending too much on rent. In B.C. and Nova Scotia, the two-bedroom rental wage is more than double the minimum wage.

From October 2022 to October 2023, minimum wage increases fell behind rental wage increases in all provinces except Manitoba.

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Data for cities and city regions across Canada show that among 62 urban areas, minimum-wage workers can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only nine of them and a two-bedroom apartment in only three. Affordable rentals are available only in Brandon, in Cape Breton, and in seven smaller Quebec cities.

At the other end of the spectrum, tenants in Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria, Kelowna, Ottawa, Calgary, and Hamilton cannot afford a two-bedroom unit even with the combined income of two full-time minimum-wage workers. In Vancouver and Toronto, two minimum-wage earners can’t even afford a one-bedroom apartment.

Another way to measure rental affordability is to calculate the number of minimum-wage hours needed to pay the average monthly rent.

In 2023, in 29 out of 37 census metropolitan areas (CMAs), rent for a two-bedroom unit consumed 80 or more hours of minimum-wage work. In 18 of these CMAs, rent consumed 100 hours or more. In Toronto and Vancouver, rent on a two-bedroom unit required 138 and 141 hours of work, respectively, leaving precious little for other essentials.

Since 2018, most cities have seen a significant increase in the number of hours of minimum-wage work required to pay rent on a two-bedroom unit, with Calgary, Lethbridge, Hamilton, Guelph, and Brantford leading the pack. A few cities saw improvements; Regina and Winnipeg each required 12 fewer hours worked due to hikes in the minimum wage.

At the neighbourhood level, among 787 neighbourhoods with data, only 22 are affordable for minimum-wage workers who need a two-bedroom unit. (Detailed neighbourhood data is available.)

The disconnect between low wages and high rents is not a “market imbalance.” Across the country, laws and regulations related to renting are designed to ensure that there are few limitations on landlords’ ability to boost profits.

Landlords don’t need to increase rents in vacant units by 20, 30, or 40 per cent. They do it because governments allow them to do it.

In Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador, rent controls simply don’t exist. In provinces where they do, vacant unit exemptions, new unit exemptions, and fixed-term leases exempt hundreds of thousands of units from rent regulation. Applications for additional increases also put upward pressure on rents, especially when large corporate and financialized landlords systemically use this loophole to drive rents as high as the market will bear.

Provincial governments could stop abusive rent increases today but are choosing not to. In the past, the federal government pushed the provinces to impose rent controls—but is choosing not to.

Recent empirical research supports the use of modern rent controls to improve long-term housing affordability. Extending collective bargaining rights to tenants would strengthen their ability to advocate for fair rents and decent housing. Public funding for non-market housing could create hundreds of thousands of affordable units.

Until such time as all levels of government get serious about realigning rents to incomes, rents in Canada will remain as they are: out of control.

Introduction

Between October 2022 and October 2023, 12.5 per cent of rental units in Canada saw a change of tenant. At the turnover from the old to the new tenant, landlords increased rents by an average of 24 per cent. In Vancouver, the average increase was 34 per cent; in Calgary, 20 per cent; in Toronto, 40 per cent; and in Halifax, 23 per cent.¹ Similar increases happened the year before, and there is no reason to believe similar increases won’t happen next year. Rents are out of control across Canada—and have been for quite some time.

The negative impacts of exorbitant housing costs go beyond housing insecurity. High rents make it hard for businesses to attract and retain workers in certain cities. They also impact how much disposable income families spend on other goods and services. The impact of skyrocketing rents on the overall economy deserves more attention.²

In 2019, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) published the first rental wage report, aiming to broaden the housing affordability debate by showing the relationship between wages and rents.³

The rental wage is the hourly wage required to afford rent while working a standard 40-hour week and spending no more than 30 per cent of one’s income on housing. (The 30 per cent threshold is a standard housing affordability measure). Put simply, the rental wage is how much people need to earn to pay rent without spending too much on it and sacrificing other basic needs like food and clothing.

Depending on the focus of the analysis, the rental wage for any area can be compared with different income measures (e.g., the minimum wage, the living wage, social assistance rates, and wage deciles). The CCPA report presented the rental wage for all provinces and census metropolitan areas (CMAs) and compared it with the local minimum wage. It looked at almost 800 neighbourhoods in Canada, providing a detailed picture across the country.

The 2019 report found that the rental wage in most neighbourhoods in Canada was much higher than the local minimum wage. We reproduced the report in 2023, finding that the gap had increased. In Canada’s two most expensive cities, Toronto and Vancouver, the rental wage for a one-bedroom unit was higher than the combined income of two minimum-wage workers.⁴

In this 2024 edition of the report, we present the updated rental wage for all provinces, 62 urban areas, and 787 neighbourhoods across Canada. (Detailed neighbourhood-level data is available only on the interactive map; provincial- and city-level data are available in the body of the report and the interactive map).

The report also compares the latest calculations with earlier findings, showing worsening trends. In the conclusion section, we argue that efforts to increase the housing supply should be coupled with measures to strengthen rent controls, which would provide direct and immediate relief to tenant households.

Methodology

The rental wage calculation is inspired by the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual Out of Reach study of affordable housing in the United States.⁵ The rental wage would ensure tenants spend no more than 30 per cent of their pre-tax earnings on rent, and it assumes tenants work a standard 40-hour week for all 52 weeks of the year. The 30 per cent rent-to-income threshold is one of three criteria (alongside state of repair and adequate number of rooms) used by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) to determine core housing need. If a tenant household spends more than 30 per cent of its income on housing, it is living in unaffordable housing.

Two-bedroom apartments are the most common rental type in Canada (49 per cent of all purpose-built units)⁶ and data for them is less likely to be suppressed in CMHC data, especially at the neighbourhood level outside of central-city areas. A two-bedroom unit also acts as a proxy for various family types in Canada, since it provides a modest amount of room for multiple people. Many households rely on only one income but contain more than one person—a single parent, a single-income family, or an adult caring for a senior, to list a few examples. In a country as rich as Canada, a sole-income earner working full time should be able to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment for their family. In most cities, this is not the case.

One-bedroom units make up 35 per cent of all purpose-built units; less data is available for them. Since the number of persons living alone in Canada has more than doubled in the past 35 years,⁷ and singles living in poverty are not receiving enough attention in policy debates,⁸ we calculated the rental wages for one-bedroom units, where possible.

Bachelor (seven per cent) and three-bedroom or more (nine per cent) apartments make up the remainder of the rental stock. We did not calculate the rental wages for these unit sizes. Townhomes, which are less common and generally more expensive to rent, are excluded from this study.

Rent data were obtained from the CMHC’s Housing Market Information Portal, which displays data from the CMHC’s Rental Market Survey (RMS). Only cities with a population of 10,000+ and buildings with three or more rental units are included in the RMS and, therefore, in this analysis.⁹ The RMS is a survey of purpose-built rental apartment buildings and row houses. A large share of renters isn’t in purpose-built rental apartment buildings; they rent sections of other types of dwellings, and those units aren’t included here.

Renters also increasingly rent condominiums. CMHC also conducts a secondary rental market survey to determine average rents for condominiums.¹⁰ The condominium and apartment datasets are rarely combined to create an average rent across both, but that has been done in all figures in this report, unless otherwise noted. The average rent for other types of secondary market housing (e.g., entire houses and second units within a house) are excluded due to lack of data. Average rents are for both occupied and vacant units. Since rent for unoccupied units is higher, averages underestimate rental costs for units that are actually available on the market.¹¹

We have used provincial minimum wages at their October 2023 level to match the time frame of the rental data survey. Some provincial minimum wages have gone up since then. Notably, on June 1, 2024, the minimum wage in B.C. increased to $17.40. However, it is very likely that rents went up by June 2024 as well.

Generally, median and average rental costs are quite similar in most of the neighbourhoods studied here, except in Vancouver and Toronto, where the average rent is significantly higher than the median.¹² We have attempted to overcome any shortcomings of using the average rent as the measure of central tendency by examining trends at the neighbourhood level. Readers can check the rental wage in their neighbourhood by consulting the interactive rental wage map on the CCPA website.

Census metropolitan areas (CMAs) combine large cities and densely populated areas surrounding them. For example, Toronto’s CMA covers most of the GTA (Greater Toronto Area); Montreal’s CMA includes Laval and the South Shore; Vancouver’s CMA includes most of the Lower Mainland. CMAs are often considered the local level for housing and labour markets since people consider housing and job opportunities within their broader region and don’t limit their choices to city limits. The Ottawa-Gatineau CMA has a somewhat integrated housing market but different minimum wages; we used the separated data—Ottawa (Ontario side) and Gatineau (Quebec side).

What’s the difference between the rental wage and the living wage?

The rental wage and the living wage are distinct ways to calculate the cost of basic necessities and the hard choices low-wage workers face every day. The two calculations highlight these challenges in slightly different ways.

The rental wage is based only on the cost of rent and is calculated for a single-earner household living either in a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom rental home. It is defined as the hourly wage that would allow tenants to spend no more than 30 per cent of their pre-tax earnings on rent.

The living wage is the hourly wage that a worker needs to cover their basic expenses and participate in the community, once government benefits (or transfers) have been added to the family’s income, and taxes and mandatory deductions have been subtracted. It has been traditionally based on a two-earner household with two young children, where both parents work full-time. Although the two calculations result in different numbers, they both point to the challenges faced by low-wage Canadians in supporting themselves and their families, the untenable situation of unaffordable rental housing across Canada, the inadequacy of the minimum wage to meet even the most basic costs of living, and the need for urgent government action to control skyrocketing rents.

Rental wages across Canada in 2023, province by province

The rental wage is considerably higher than the minimum wage in every province, as seen in Table 1. The gap between the minimum wage and one-bedroom rental wages varies from $1.79 per hour ($15 vs. $16.79) in Newfoundland and Labrador to $13.21 per hour ($16.75 vs. $29.96 per hour) in B.C. Quebec has the smallest gap between the minimum wage and the two-bedroom rental wage, but even there, workers need to earn $4.79 more per hour ($15.25 vs. $20.04) to afford a unit without spending too much on rent. In B.C. and Ontario, the two-bedroom rental wage is more than twice as much as the minimum wage; that’s nearly the case in Nova Scotia too.

In the province with the highest minimum wage in the country as of October 2023, British Columbia ($16.75 per hour), minimum-wage workers cannot rent a place without spending more than 30 per cent of their income, on average. British Columbia and Ontario had the country’s highest minimum wage and the two highest rental wage. Because of recent increases, Manitoba now has the third highest minimum wage. Still, Manitoba’s minimum wage is 36 per cent below the rental wage for a one-bedroom unit.

In a year-over-year comparison, from October 2022 to October 2023, minimum wage increases fell behind rental wage increases in all provinces except Manitoba and P.E.I., the two provinces with strongest rent controls in the country, as shown in Table 2.

Alberta is the starkest case. The minimum wage in the province didn’t budge, while the rental wage for two-bedroom units rose by more than 10 per cent. At the other end of the spectrum, Manitoba saw the largest minimum wage increase: 13.3 per cent. Regretfully, minimum-wage earners in the province spent a considerable portion of their additional income on rent since the rental wage increased by 5.1 per cent in the same period.

Higher minimum wages don’t always translate into better living conditions because landlords capture a large share of wage gains through rent hikes. Hard-fought-for wage increases should improve the material conditions of working families, not go back into the pockets of landlords. Higher wages should also fuel productive economic activity through consumption, but that would require the money to be spent on Main Street.

Urban areas

Soaring rents are everywhere. Table 3 presents the rental wages for 62 urban areas for which data are available. In only nine cities, minimum-wage workers can afford a one-bedroom unit without spending too much on rent; in three cities, they can afford a two-bedroom unit. Almost all the affordable areas are in Quebec, except for Brandon, Manitoba, and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

In turn, in Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria, Kelowna, Ottawa, Calgary, and Halifax, the combined income of two full-time minimum-wage workers is insufficient to afford a two-bedroom unit. In Vancouver and Toronto, the combined income of minimum-wage workers isn’t enough to afford a one-bedroom unit without sacrificing other needs.

Compared to last year’s analysis, the five cities with the highest rental wages remain the same. Hamilton climbed closer to the top of the list, passing Guelph, Saskatoon, Barrie, Winnipeg, and Halifax to become the city with the seventh-highest two-bedroom rental wage. Hamilton is on the precipice: it almost joined the group of cities where two minimum-wage earners can’t afford a two-bedroom unit.

Winnipeg became comparatively more affordable in this period, likely due to a significant minimum wage increase and the fact that the province has rent control on vacant units, which tame rent increases. Charlottetown also improved positions compared to Windsor, Thunder Bay, Lethbridge, and Saint John, and that could also be the impact of a minimum wage increase coupled with rent control on vacant units.

We have also calculated the number of minimum-wage working hours average rents consume. In 2023, in 29 out of 37 census metropolitan areas (CMAs), rent for a two-bedroom unit consumed 80 hours of work or more, the equivalent of two weeks of full-time work. In 18 CMAs, rent consumed 100 hours or more, the equivalent of two-and-a-half weeks of full-time work. In Toronto and Vancouver, rent consumed more than the equivalent of three weeks of work. There are other expenses for workers than rent, and with so much of their income going to landlords, there is precious little for anything else.

Compared to 2018, rent consumed more working hours in 28 out of 37 CMAs. In this five-year period, rents in Calgary consumed almost three more days of full-time work at the minimum wage. In Hamilton, the minimum wage hours required to pay rent rose from 85 to 103. In Regina and Winnipeg, the number of hours has dropped by 12. In Regina, the biggest drop happened in the early 2020s, after the minimum wage jumped from $11.32 an hour in 2019 to $13 an hour in 2022. Winnipeg saw a seven-hour drop in the past year as the minimum wage rose from $13.50 to $15.30 an hour.

Of the 787 neighbourhoods across Canada with data, only 22 are affordable for minimum-wage workers who need a two-bedroom unit.

If we zoom in on Canada’s larger CMAs, there is data for 37 of them. In 26 out of 37 CMAs, there are no neighbourhoods where a minimum-wage worker could afford a one-bedroom unit without spending more than 30 per cent of their income on rent. In only four CMAs (St. John’s, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Trois-Rivières), these workers could live in more than one-third of all neighbourhoods in their city without spending too much on rent.

Minimum-wage workers who need a two-bedroom unit cannot comfortably afford any neighbourhood in 31 out of 37 CMAs. In only two CMAs (Saguenay and Trois-Rivières), these workers can live in more than one-third of all neighbourhoods in their city without spending too much on rent.

Even in large urban centres where significant shares of the workforce are employed in low-wage industries (e.g., retail and hospitality), the number of neighbourhoods affordable to minimum-wage workers is mostly non-existent.

Minimum-wage workers cannot afford to live anywhere in the census metropolitan areas of Toronto or Vancouver without exceeding the 30 per cent affordability threshold. In Montreal, a city that used to be known as affordable, workers looking for a one-bedroom rental are priced out of 87 per cent of all neighbourhoods. In traditional working-class towns in Ontario, like Hamilton and Oshawa, no areas remain affordable for minimum-wage workers.

The disconnect between low wages and high rents is not simply a market imbalance. The large and growing gap illustrates how Canada’s employers and landlords double-dip on low-wage workers, paying them inadequate wages and then taking a large portion of their wage increases back in the form of rent increases. The structural exploitation of tenants is deeply embedded in Canadian history.¹³ It didn’t start this year, the year before, or 30 years ago.¹⁴ It goes back much further to the expropriation of Indigenous land, the creation of land and housing markets, the establishment of financial institutions that buttress those markets, and the robust funding of enforcement apparatuses that ensure nobody stands in the way of profit.

While it is in the interest of market housing providers to argue that more market housing is the solution to the problems that for-profit housing has created, affordability being one of them, a serious debate would consider other alternatives.

Chief among them would be limiting profit and halting profiteering in housing. Landlords in Toronto don’t need to increase rents in vacant units by 40 per cent. They do it because they can. Because governments allow them to do it. That should change.

Provincial governments have the authority to impose or strengthen rent controls, but they’re not doing so. In provinces where rent controls currently don’t exist—Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador—governments are simply looking the other way. Nova Scotia has extended its temporary and weak rent controls, which is a wiser, if timid, move.

Where controls exist—P.E.I., Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and B.C.—vacant unit exemptions, new unit exemptions, and conversions to fixed-term leases exempt large portions of the stock from rent regulation. Applications for additional increases (called above-guideline rent increases, additional rent increases, or increases due to major work) also put upward pressure on rents, especially when large corporate and financialized landlords systemically use this loophole to increase rents to as much as the market will bear.¹⁵

These provinces are not trying to strengthen rent controls. On the contrary, many are weakening them. In 2018, Ontario exempted new units from all forms of rent control. In 2021, the B.C. government passed legislation making above rent increases easier to apply for. In 2023, Quebec restricted lease transfers that served as a form of rent control on vacant units. Nova Scotia is choosing not to crack down on fixed-term leases, which have become more common since the enactment of rent increase guidelines.

Provincial governments have the regulatory authority to stop abusive rent increases today, but they are choosing not to.

The federal government could act, too. In the mid-1970s, one of Ottawa’s main anti-inflation measures was to persuade provinces to impose rent controls. It worked. When inflation hit 12.5 percent in 1981, rent inflation was 6.4 per cent. Controlling rents helped tame inflation. Today, uncontrolled rents are pushing inflation up, not restraining it. Between May 2023 and May 2024, rents rose 8.9 per cent, against the 2.9 per cent headline inflation figure.

In its 2024 budget, the federal government announced the creation of a Renters’ Bill of Rights. So far, it looks like this bill will not include rent controls; a grave mistake.

Critics of rent controls claim they reduce the incentive to build rental housing supply. These claims disingenuously draw on studies of rent freezes enacted in war times and abstract economic theory.¹⁶ Today’s rent controls—known as second-generation controls and rent stabilization policies—allow landlords to increase rents every year up to a maximum amount that usually matches inflation. Recent empirical research supports the use of second-generation controls to improve long-term housing affordability, especially in cases where governments provide financial incentives for construction, which the Canadian government currently does. (We review the rent control literature elsewhere).¹⁷

Rent control is not the only policy intervention required to reign in rents. Extending collective bargaining rights to organized tenants is also a critical step in ensuring tenants have a better chance when fighting for fair rents and decent housing. A massive increase in public funding for non-market housing (social, co-op, and not-for-profit housing) could create rental units that are more affordable for low-income families. Zoning reforms allowing more housing to be built in urban areas can critically increase housing availability, though these reforms have a limited impact on affordability unless land values are concomitantly regulated.¹⁸

There are many things that could and should be done, but enacting strong rent control is the most obvious measure and the one that would have the most direct impact on stopping the proffering that is driving rents up across the country. There is more than one way to design rent controls to balance benefits and risks, and a thoughtful debate is long overdue.

If wages and rents remain decoupled, who is all new housing being constructed for? Not workers.

Notes

CMHC, “Rental Market Survey Data Tables,” 2023.
For a notable exception, see John Rapley, “Canada’s approach to housing is bad for the economy,” The Globe and Mail, July 14, 2023.
David Macdonald, “Unaccommodating: Rental Housing Wage in Canada” (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2018), policyalternatives.ca/unaccommodating.
David Macdonald and Ricardo Tranjan, “Can’t afford the rent. Rental wages in Canada 2023” (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2023), policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/cant-afford-rent
See, Andrew Aurand et al, “Out of Reach: The High Cost of Housing” (Washigtion, D.C. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2021), nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/2021/Out-of-Reach_2021.pdf
CHMC, “Urban Rental Market Survey Data: Number of Units,” 2023.
Jackie Tang, Nora Galbraith, Johnny Truong, “Living alone in Canada,” Insights on Canadian Society, Statistics Canada, 2019.
Dean Herd, Yuna Kim, and Christina Carrasco, “Canada’s Forgotten Poor? Putting Singles Living in Deep Poverty on the Policy Radar” (Montreal: Institute for Public Policy Research, 2020), irpp.org/research-studies
CMHC, “Housing Market Information Portal, Methodology for Rental Market Survey,” 2023.
This survey is only conducted in the following cities: Halifax, Montreal, Gatineau, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, London, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Kelowna, Vancouver and Victoria. Adjustments are made to average rents in these cities as well as to provincial and national figures, unless otherwise noted.
CMHC, “Average Apartment Rents (Vacant & Occupied Units,” 2021).
See Figure 1 in Ron Kneebone and Margarita Wilkins, “The very poor and the affordability of housing,” University of Calgary, School of Public Policy Research papers 9, no.27 (2016).
Ricardo Tranjan, The Tenant Class (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2023).
John C. Bacher, Keeping to the Market Place: The Evolution of Canadian Housing Policy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993).
Philip Zigman aand Martine August, “Above Guideline Rent Increases in the Age of Financialization” (Toronto: RenovictionsTO, 2021), renovictionsto.com/reports
Tom Slater, “Rent control and housing justice,” Finisterra 55, no. 114 (2020).
Ricardo Tranjan and Paulina Vargatoth, “Rent control in Ontario—facts, flaws, and fixes” (Ottawa: Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, 2024), monitormag.ca/reports/rent-control-in-ontario-part-1
Patrick M. Condon, Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban Crisis (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2024).

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Alex Hemingway, Christine Saulnier, Iglika Ivanova, Randy Robinson, and Simon Enoch for their comments on an earlier version of this report.

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Federal drug-price regulator unveils new guidelines for 2026 - The Globe and Mail
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 3:53 PM

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The liberals just can’t resist doing things as badly as possible

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Air pollution linked to lung cancer-driving DNA mutations, study finds | Cancer research | The Guardian
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 3:41 PM

The Guardian

Air pollution has been linked to a swathe of lung cancer-driving DNA mutations, in a study of people diagnosed with the disease despite never having smoked tobacco.

The findings from an investigation into cancer patients around the world helps explain why those who have never smoked make up a rising proportion of people developing the cancer, a trend the researchers called an “urgent and growing global problem”.

Prof Ludmil Alexandrov, a senior author on the study at the University of California in San Diego, said researchers had observed the “problematic trend” but had not understood the cause.

“Our research shows that air pollution is strongly associated with the same types of DNA mutations we typically associate with smoking,” he said.

The scientists analysed the entire genetic code of lung tumours removed from 871 never-smokers in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia as part of the Sherlock-Lung study. They found that the higher the levels of air pollution in a region, the more cancer-driving and cancer-promoting mutations were present in residents’ tumours.

Fine-particulate air pollution was in particular linked to mutations in the TP53 gene. These have previously been associated with tobacco smoking.

People exposed to greater air pollution also had shorter telomeres, protective strands of DNA found at the ends of chromosomes, which are often compared with the caps on shoelaces. Premature shortening of telomeres is a sign of more rapid cell division, a hallmark of cancer.

“This is an urgent and growing global problem that we are working to understand,” said Dr Maria Teresa Landi, an epidemiologist on the study at the US National Cancer Institute in Maryland.

With smoking in decline in many parts of the world, including the UK and the US, people who have never smoked are making up a larger proportion of lung cancer patients. Current estimates suggest that 10-25% of lung cancers are now diagnosed in this group. Almost all such cancers are a form known as adenocarcinoma.

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. About 2.5m new cases are diagnosed globally each year. More than a million of the deaths occur in China, where smoking, air pollution and other environmental contaminants are factors.

Recent research found that the highest rates of adenocarcinoma attributable to air pollution were in east Asia. While cases in the UK were much lower, they still amounted to more than 1,100 new diagnoses a year, scientists found.

The latest work, published in Nature, identified only a slight rise in cancer-causing mutations in people exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke.

But the study highlighted a significant risk from certain Chinese herbal medicines that contain aristolochic acid. Signature mutations linked to the herbal medicines were seen almost exclusively in never-smokers from Taiwan.

Another mysterious mutational signature was seen in people who had never smoked but not those who did, and was now the focus of “intense investigation”, Landi said.

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A machine learning model using clinical notes to identify physician fatigue | Nature Communications
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 3:39 PM

Nature Communications

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Tired doctors aren’t thinking, they’re on autopilot

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On the Front Lines of the War Against 'Super Lice' | The Local Tuesday July 15th, 2025 at 5:42 PM

Irish tourist jailed by Ice for months after overstaying US visit by three days: ‘Nobody is safe’ | US immigration | The Guardian Tuesday July 15th, 2025 at 5:32 PM

‘I thought I was going home’

‘We were treated less than human’

‘This will be a lifelong burden’

Out-of-control rents - CCPA Tuesday July 15th, 2025 at 4:21 PM

Introduction

Methodology

Rental wages across Canada in 2023, province by province

Urban areas

Notes

Acknowledgements

Federal drug-price regulator unveils new guidelines for 2026 - The Globe and Mail Tuesday July 15th, 2025 at 3:53 PM

Air pollution linked to lung cancer-driving DNA mutations, study finds | Cancer research | The Guardian Tuesday July 15th, 2025 at 3:41 PM

A machine learning model using clinical notes to identify physician fatigue | Nature Communications Tuesday July 15th, 2025 at 3:39 PM

On the Front Lines of the War Against 'Super Lice' | The Local
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 5:42 PM

Irish tourist jailed by Ice for months after overstaying US visit by three days: ‘Nobody is safe’ | US immigration | The Guardian
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 5:32 PM

Out-of-control rents - CCPA
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 4:21 PM

Federal drug-price regulator unveils new guidelines for 2026 - The Globe and Mail
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 3:53 PM

Air pollution linked to lung cancer-driving DNA mutations, study finds | Cancer research | The Guardian
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 3:41 PM

A machine learning model using clinical notes to identify physician fatigue | Nature Communications
Tuesday July 15^th, 2025 at 3:39 PM