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LONDON, ENGLAND. Exposure to other people's tobacco smoke is a potent cause of
lung cancer. This is the conclusion of a major study just completed by
scientists at the Royal London School of Medicine. The scientists reviewed 37
published epidemiological studies dealing with the risk of lung cancer among
non-smokers living with a smoker. The overall conclusion is that a woman who
lives with a man who smokes increases her risk of developing lung cancer by 26
per cent. The risk increases with the number of cigarettes smoked by the
husband (88 per cent if he smokes 30 a day) and with increasing exposure time
(35 per cent for 30 years of exposure). These findings are supported by the
fact that carcinogens specific to tobacco are found in the blood and urine of
non-smokers exposed to passive smoking. Other researchers have found that
exposure to secondhand smoke results in a 23 per cent increase in the risk of
developing ischemic heart disease (angina). Ronald Davis of the Henry Ford
Health System in Detroit in an accompanying editorial concludes that passive
smoking is one of the leading preventable causes of premature death in the
United States. He estimates that exposure to other people's smoke causes 3,000
deaths from lung cancer every year, 35,000 to 62,000 deaths from heart disease
and 150,000 to 300,000 cases of bronchitis or pneumonia in children aged 18
months or younger. Passive smoking has also been linked to the development of
asthma in children (8,000 to 26,000 new cases every year), exacerbation of
asthma in up to a million children, middle ear infections in children, low birth
weight, and thousands of sudden infant deaths. These figures are for passive
smoking only. Other research has clearly shown that men who smoke cigarettes
have a 19 times higher risk of developing lung cancer than do men who never
smoked.
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