OTTUMWA — It’s been 22 years since Lowell Dahm snuffed out his last cigarette.

The New Sharon man originally started smoking in 1966 but decided to quit in 1986.

Always in relatively good health, Dahm, 61, made sure he went to the doctor’s office for an annual check-up.

But this year, a doctor noticed Dahm’s Prostate-Specific Antigen levels were elevated. High PSA levels are often an indicator of prostate cancer.

Before doctors could check surgically, Dahm had to undergo a full pre-op physical. During the routine, a small spot was discovered on one of Dahm’s lungs.

The news was not what he or anyone wants to hear — Dahm has lung cancer.

“It’s a little shocking at first,” he said just prior to going in for his first round of chemo and radiation treatments Thursday at the McCreery Cancer Center in Ottumwa. “I really have no pain, no symptoms.”

Whether or not smoking is the contributing factor in Dahm’s lung cancer is unknown, but according to a recent study by the State Health Registry of Iowa and the University of Iowa, a portion of southern Iowa has some of the highest rates of lung cancer incidence and mortality rates between 2000 and 2005.

Denise Conrad, the southeast Iowa staff partner with the American Cancer Society, said it’s not surprising to see where some of the highest rates of lung cancer are found on the Iowa map.

The map shows higher levels of lung cancer in both Wapello and Monroe counties as well as a good portion of Mahaska County.

Between 1996 and 2004, Monroe County was the leading county among all of Iowa’s 99 counties in terms of lung cancer incidence percentages. That number dropped to 20th in the state after information from the 2000 census was factored in.

Wapello and Mahaksa counties are No. 4 and 5 respectively in terms of the percentage of reported lung cancer cases.

Those red pockets of high lung cancer rates (see maps) are areas where there is a higher rate of smoking, blue-collarworkers, manufacturing jobs and where coal mining previously occured, Conrad said.

“And in southern Iowa, there are higher rates of radon gas,” she said.

But a vast majority of the lung cancer cases, 70-90 percent, are directly related to smoking.