LUNG CANCER: RESEARCH INTO SMOKING EFFECTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 October 1950, Page 7

LUNG CANCER: RESEARCH INTO SMOKING EFFECTS

LONDON, October 2'.—Two British doctors who spent more than 10 years studying the habits of smokers, and diseases which smoking is likely to encourage, have submitted a report to the British Medical Journal which concludes that smoking is an important factor in the causing of lung cancer. The doctors found that from 1922 to 1947 there was a 15-fold increase m the number of deaths attributed to lung cancer. Two of the main causes put forward for such increase are: (1) General atmospheric pollution from the dust of tarred roads, and from exhaust fumes, gasworks, industrial plant, and coalfires, and (2) Tobacco smoking. Doctors compared the proportion of lung cancer patients who were smokers with the proportion in a group of patients without the disease. They defined a smoker as “a person who had smoked as much as one cigarette a day for as long as one year.” It was found that the majority of men with lung cancer had been smokers at some period, and the risk varied in approximately the simple proportion to the amount smoked. Inhaling smdke was not distinctly associated with lung cancer, and pipesmoking was found to be less closely related to the disease than cigarette smoking. Of 649 men with cancer who were interviewed, 0.3 per cent, were nonsmokers, and of 60 women, 31.7 per cent.

The figures obtained suggested that above the age of 45 the risk of developing cancer increased in proportion to the amount smoked and that the risk was approximately 50 times as great among those who smoke 25 or more cigarettes a day as among non-smokers.