>i'm thinking about my family i was thinking about my kids. that made me want to get through it. it's a medical mystery. >all lung cancer and everybody, all race ethnicity is decreasing dramatically except asian women, nonsmokers the silent killer. that's disconcerting doctors >about 2017 is when i started getting young asian patients that were my colleagues, and how a car crash may have saved this bay area mother's life. >i consider myself lucky. i consider myself blessed >liz>when you think of lung

cancer, certain stigmas probably come to mind. but these day doctors are seeing something out of the ordinary. an alarming number of asian american women who don't smoke are being diagnosed, and scientists are struggling to understand why. today, we're talking with the doctor and a patient who says a fender bender may have saved her life. we'll get into that story in just a few minutes. but first, a look at your news headlines a construction worker is in critical condition after a trench collapse in san mateo. this happened just before 930 this morning on west 41st avenue. officials say the man was partially buried in ten feet of dirt while working on the sewer lines. it took rescue crews nearly an hour to get him out. san francisco city workers are targeting more neighborhoods as part of the mayor's push to clear out homeless encampments. today, crews dismantled tents and cleaned sidewalks on division street in the design district notices were posted in the area saying the city will provide shelter. the enforcement comes

in the wake of a supreme court ruling giving cities more power to carry out these sweeps. san francisco mayor london breed signed a $16 billion budget. city officials are touting investments in law enforcement staffing, the revitalization of downtown and outreach programs. the budget also cuts vacant positions. the city says this helps close a $789 million deficit. the park fire near chico has now burned an area larger than the city of los angeles. fire crews are starting to gain ground on this fire. containment is up to 18%, but thunderstorms and high winds are in the forecast for tomorrow. and speaking of the forecast here, let's get to our first alert weather now. and wildfires prompting another air quality advisory here in the bay area. let's check in with meteorologist darren peck. >darren>darren, >>how long is this going to stick around this air quality advisory? >darren>well, at least for this one for the next two days. but i think we should be preparing ourselves over the next several weeks. there will be more, especially because of

the stories you just covered liz with. not only the park fire, but also the pedro fire, which shows up on our map here. when we look at smoke concentrations. watch what happens over the next 24 hours. we're going to bring ahead a plume of smoke that's going to progress towards the bay, so that by the time we get into tomorrow afternoon, we've already seen an additional amount of smoke come overhead. so that's tomorrow. and then there could be more as we go into early next week. the good news on this is it's just looking at air quality sensors. and we're all pretty much good with a few moderate sensors right now that are showing up. however the bay area air quality management district is forecasting it to stay moderate. so if you smell smoke, go easy on yourself and take those advisories seriously because it's a good heads up. we could have a little more smoke in the sky. and that's just coming from the several different wildfires that are burning. let's talk about the other aspect in the forecast right now. look what's showing up in southern california. watch the clouds develop here. isolated thunderstorms. and when we watch it on water

vapor, there is a counterclockwise spin in that. this is going to pull what's typically desert southwest thunderstorms. and drag them into california. if you just look at the water vapor, watch how that increases overhead over the next 24 hours. we're going to see some readings for water vapor in the atmosphere that are approaching record levels for us for this time of year, and the only thing that tells us is there's going to be a good amount of ingredients to work with for thunderstorms and here's why i say that. watch the high resolution forecast model over the next two days, we get a wave of added energy to tap into that moisture and create two kind of different opportunities here for thunderstorms. we just looked at this on the big picture, and i didn't stop it. i want to slow it down. we're going to come in for a closer view and watch what happens now when we play this again, this is tomorrow. we get a line of thunderstorms here that gets pulled into the east bay. now this is one of the more aggressive forecasts. so it's a little too early to look at a

model like that and say we're going to get thunderstorms in alameda county tomorrow. however, it's not too early to say, realistically looking at this. there's about a 10% chance that actually could occur. those are low odds, but it's still a fairly noticeable aspect to the weather should it occur. so we're giving you an early heads up. this model is a little more bullish on this notion than it was yesterday. and if that trend continues, we might very well be talking about this as we head into tomorrow for a few isolated thunderstorms, maybe some light rain with it. there wouldn't be a lot of rain with it. we'd be concerned about lightning strikes should this happen, and the sierra clearly is the other region where we've got a much higher degree of concern for this. thankfully, there's going to be some wetting rain in this scenario for friday, and saturday. but look at that line of thunderstorms right there as we go through late friday into early saturday morning. any lightning on the landscape right now would be problematic, so we'll keep a close eye on that. that's going to be an area of focus but the odds here at home are low. so let's get into the seven day forecast and i'll show you how that plays out for us. look at the warm

up. so we did enough warm up over the last few days that you're already noticing temperatures climbing into the 90s. we're going to go into the low hundreds tomorrow for some of our hottest inland locations, and then we'll just kind of oscillate up and down from there, kind of staying right around that 100 degree mark. a little below it, little above it for pretty much the next seven days if you're inland. all right liz, back to you, >liz>daryn. thanks so much today we're talking about lung cancer among nonsmoking asian american women. it's a subject that i have reported extensively on and now we're hearing from an east bay mother who says getting into a car accident, probably saved her life. the accident led to her diagnosis before it was too late and as our kevin ko reports, her story is part of a puzzle that her doctor has been trying to solve in hopes of saving other women just like her fremont mom maria christina delgado's life took a terrifying turn when she got in her car, dropped off my kids with her friends. she got rear

ended, went in for a routine checkup post accident, and doctors found a lung nodule that wasn't there before i would have never known. it turned out maria an active filipino woman who doesn't smoke or drink, had lung cancer i was shocked when i got the news from the doctor that it was in fact, cancer no idea was it my diet? was it my environment? thinking about my family, i was thinking about my kids that made me want to get through it maria laid in the hospital, keeping herself optimistic by sending videos like this from her bed to the people she loves. three incisions in her lung and one surgery later. she's walking today. cancer free cancer. she would have never known about if she was never in a car accident. i consider myself lucky. i consider myself blessed from at first i was mad at that guy. this jerk. why the heck did he

have to hit me right but maybe now i have to thank him. i have her cell phone number. maybe i say, hey, thank you for hitting me now you saved my life. of course there's the surgeon who did save her life. hi, doctor maria is seeing her surgeon for the first time since her operation remembering the first conversation, she had with doctor jeffrey velarde. this is your situation. this is what i'm studying. it's exactly you. and this is what i'm going to do. doctor vallarta regularly removes cancers from the chest, mostly lungs and he noticed something about seven years ago, about 2017 is when i started getting young asian patients that were my colleagues, that were my friends that were found to have lung cancer, 30 year olds. so we looked at all of our northern california data at kaiser, and we found that all lung cancer and everybody, all race ethnicity is decreasing dramatically except asian women nonsmokers. the reason for this disparity in nonsmoking asian women is

still unclear, but doctor vallarta says his early research shows the highest risk factor for nonsmoking asian women could be a family history of lung cancer. but lung cancer screenings nationwide require patients to be more than 50 years old and have an extensive smoking history. right now, if you go into your primary care provider and say, i'm asian, i'm 50, i don't smoke. i have a family history of lung cancer. your primary care doctor will be like what? right? what? you're not. you don't cut. you're not covered for that. it really hit home to me that, hey, we need to be doing something more other than just saying, hey, look, it's increasing but what do we do about it? that's why he's pushing for changes in screening regulations he says most nonsmoking asian women don't find out they have lung cancer until it's in its late stages, lessening the effectiveness of treatment. we caught it, incidentally because, unfortunate or fortunate, she got that car accident. so in her case, we were really really lucky. and and and i love that. but what we're seeing the majority of time and based on what i see

clinically and radiologically and based on the research, is that most women, asian women, non smokers are not caught with that because they don't get in a car accident or they don't get a routine imaging. so they're caught way too late. >liz>kaiser is currently working on screening 200 asian nonsmoking women with a family history of lung cancer coming up, we're checking in with with the mother in the story we just told you about. we'll see how she's doing these days and ask her about that car crash that may have saved her life. our one on one conversation with her right after the break

we just told you the story of one lung cancer survivor who received her diagnosis during medical screening after a car accident. she is joining us live now with an update on her health. christine, thanks so much for joining us. >live>hi. thank you for having me >liz>first, how are you feeling since your surgery >live>i'm feeling great actually. we in fact, today is like what august first? so i had that surgery a month ago. exactly july 1st. >liz>wow, wow wow. and you're going to have to go and get screened every certain amount of time, right >live>yes. doctor villota had mentioned to me that he will have me on a screening every six months. >liz>and have you not had to have any kind of chemotherapy or radiation or any kind of cancer treatment? >live>thank god for that. no, i don't have to go to chemo or

radiology or any other treatment other than the surgery. that doctor had given to >liz>me. that is so fortunate. now you mentioned you never smoked. you leave a very healthy lifestyle yet data shows asian american women are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer than any other racial group. did you know about that statistic when you were first diagnosed? >live>honestly, 100% no. no idea until after i consulted with doctor viloria and learned that there is actually in fact, that situation where asian women, particularly filipina, i guess vietnamese and chinese, that we are prone to, to have lung cancer without a history of smoking or drinking or anything like that. >liz>yeah. i mean, we've reported extensively on asian women and lung cancer and many of them talked about the stigma of lung cancer being kind of a smoker's disease. and there's often a sense of shame that comes with

that. is that something that you found yourself having to explain to people that, yes, you had lung cancer, but you never smoked a day in your life? >live>yeah exactly. they asked me, so what did you do? how did you get i mean, most of my friends, of course, my family knows i don't smoke, i don't drink, so when i shared the news with them, of course, we were all shocked. like how you know, how did that happen? what? what did you do? like i don't know, i didn't do anything. i was, i was born in the philippines and that could be maybe one of the reasons why. but no, i honestly have no idea. >liz>do you ever think back to that day you got in that car accident with such gratitude that that's that accident really saved your life >live>yeah, i after that because that's how we found my lung cancer right after we had a x ray chest for the neck. and then my doctor was discussing to me about the, the motor vehicle accident. and then after that she mentioned that there was a small nodule that was found on my left upper lung

lobe and that, you know, nothing to worry about. we will continue to surveillance it or screen it every so often. and that's what we did. and so this year, the last, ct scan that i have gotten, which was march, that one turned out to be really, a cancer. when they told me that it grew and then i i had asked for a biopsy and then the biopsy confirmed it, that it is in fact, a stage one adenocarcinoma lung cancer. >liz>so what do you want other asian women to know about your experience and the fact that asian women, according to this data, are more likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer, yet they're not eligible to be screened? at least insurance won't look at it. that way until they're at least 50 years old and have a history of smoking. what do you want to see change >live>you know, i wanted to see that a lot more women, young or old be proactive into their care like ask their physician

whether or not they don't have any symptoms. like me, i don't have any symptoms. i don't have any family history of lung cancer. i never smoke a day in my life. i never drank and here i am with that. right? so i guess my suggestion to anyone out there whether or not you're asian whether or not you're young or you're old, proactively and advocate for yourself to let your physician know that you want it to be tested for this one, for a lung cancer, just like any other screening that we have there. we have a mammogram to screen for breast cancer. we have cervical, screening. we have colon screening why not a lung cancer? now that the test and according to doctor valerie's study it is increasing right so i hope to, to save a lot of people out there. the same thing as mine. if you don't get into a car accident, how are you going to find out if you don't consult with your physician? and i know it's not part of, you know, the

insurance that would cover that, but push for it anyway. >liz>all right. christine, thank you so much for sharing this story, this success story. and thank goodness that you got into that car accident and you are alive today to tell us what your message is. thank you. so much. >live>thank you for having me >liz>well, the surgeon who saved maria's life joins us next. what he thinks may be driving these cases of lung cancer and how he's working to change the screening p why didn't we do this last year? before you were preventing migraine with qulipta®? and look at me now. you'll never truly forget migraine, but zero-migraine days are possible. don't take if allergic to qulipta®. most common side effects are nausea, constipation, and sleepiness. qulipta®. the forget-you-get migraine medicine™.

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easy prep. easy cook. easy clean. today we're focusing on nonsmoking asian american women being diagnosed with lung cancer at a much higher rate than other racial groups joining me now is kaiser permanente surgeon doctor jeffrey varlotta. doctor, thank you so much for being with us. >live>thank you, liz, thank you for having me on. sorry that i'm in my car. we did not christine and i did not plan me being in the car on the side of the freeway right >liz>now that's all right. you look great. we can see you and hear you perfectly. you started noticing in your practice. you said in about 2017, and kevin's report nonsmoking asian women being diagnosed with lung cancer. what do you think is driving the trend >live>yeah, absolutely it started i started seeing it in a in a lot younger group. and really what we what the the idea is it's not from screening because this as you know from your previous report, it's not from we don't have a lung cancer screening test. so what we're thinking is, is that we're just finding the roots of

it and i think that part of it is going to be multifactorial. some of it could be pollution, some of it could be genetic. but now that we have new biomarker mutations that we can find meaning blood tests and find out more information on this, that that will help. and that study that we're currently on with the ucsf fan study as you heard earlier back in may when you that you reported on, we're hoping to find out what the actual cause is because clearly it's multifactorial and it is incident. the incidence is increasing every year. >liz>right. and your kaiser is doing their own study. you're looking about 200 women with a history of lung cancer, correct. what are you finding so far or where are you in your study >live>right. so it's just getting off the ground. but the real big thing. so we haven't started yet but the real cool thing is this would be the first study on the on, you know, on the west coast. essentially there's a study similar that's being done in new york, but they're just looking at women from the age of 40 to 74 years old, all asian nonsmoking women, we found in our early research was

that family history of lung cancer actually is a big, big risk factor, probably one of the maybe the most important risk factor. so we're screening women over the age of 40, but also with a family history of lung cancer. and we think we're going to pick up even more so with that because in the beginnings of these studies, this is brand, brand new right? we do want to try to pick up the highest risk group. and it's as you probably can imagine it's not super feasible to just screen all asian women nonsmokers, right. in the bay area so we kind of honed in on a on a subset group with a family history, lung cancer. and we think that's going to be the highest risk group as of right now. >liz>you know, one element that kind of keeps coming up with a lot of our reporting on this issue is possibly a link between cooking on gas stoves, which, as you know, a lot of asian women do, especially over a wok. do you find any validity to that link >live>it is in china. >liz>okay. >>so in certain areas in rural, rural china, there's actually up to 30% of the women have actually gotten lung cancer.

but they they cook with coal and they don't have any outdoor ventilation. everything's indoor. so we have seen that. but we don't see that in the states because as you can imagine, there is slightly better ventilation. it's a different, you know different sociodemographic population. so i don't think that holds up or that hasn't showed up to hold an asian american women and just, just that's just mostly in subset of women in particular areas of china with, with high walk rates, with no ventilation. >liz>i want to get this last question in, because so many of your patients, christine, be the exception and thank goodness she got into that car accident and you caught her her lung cancer. but so many of the patients you're seeing when they're finally diagnosed, it's already stage four. and they're so young sometimes in their 30s and 40s. why is it taking so long for these women to start to see any symptoms >live>that's the issue. it's that it's really a silent disease in the beginning. a little small small lung spot. you're not going to feel anything, and you're often only going to have a mild cough. so the issue why we're getting caught earlier, it's not that

the disease is more aggressive in asian american women, nonsmokers. it's actually that it's just caught way later. and because it's not caught till you have symptom after symptom after symptom, you get the reflux medication, you get asthma medication. and they and they you know, doctors aren't aware of this phenomenon as we as we know. and so they, they they don't get it till it's too late. and i think that's the issue is that to christine, put it perfectly, you have to be proactive about your health and you have to say, hey, there's something not right. there's something not right. can i get an imaging study? at the very least, an x-ray early but really, we really want a ct scan now. and we want it earlier than later. so not waiting several months or even a years and years. and a lot of these women years have passed by with these symptoms. >liz>that's right. doctor jeffrey varlotta with kaiser. thank you so much for joining us >live>thank you. >liz>and we'll be righ

coming up tonight on the cbs evening news for our eye on america meet the young people breaking into an old industry. farming. see the programs that are helping sow the seeds for a new generation to take over. that's tonight on the cbs evening news. >liz>and coming up tonight at 5:00 as homeless encampment sweeps are happening, we'll take a look at a policy that faces some scrutiny. a behind the scenes look at bagging and tagging that story, and more with ryan yamamoto and myself coming up tonight at five. and thanks so much for joining us for today's conversation. we'd

love to hear what you think. post your thoughts online using the hashtag kpix. the cbs evening news is next. local news continues on our streaming service cbs news, bay area. i'll see you at five. >> norah: tonight, free and on their way home. after months long, historic negotiations, "wall street journal" reporter evan gershkovich and mar