The death rate from lung cancer in the heavily industrialized province surrounding Beijing has more than quadrupled in the last four decades, with researchers pointing to worsening air pollution as a likely culprit, according to a local cancer hospital and a report published Friday in an influential Chinese news outlet. From 1973 to 2012, lung cancer cases in the province, Hebei, soared 306 percent, well above the national average, and accounted for almost a quarter of all cancer deaths, according to figures from the Tumor Hospital of Hebei Province . By 2012, the death rate from lung cancer in the province, which has 74 million people, or almost twice the population of California, was 35.22 per 100,000 […]