Smoking Looks Even Worse

It is hard to believe there is anything new to be learned about the evils of
tobacco. But a depressing new analysis by a team assembled by the World
Health Organization has found that tobacco is a lot more dangerous than
anyone previously realized, whether one smokes it directly or inhales the
fumes expelled by someone else.

The panel of 29 experts from a dozen countries was formed by the
International Agency for Research on Cancer, the W.H.O. unit charged with
assessing cancer risks. The analysis is billed as the most comprehensive
assessment of smoking hazards ever and will be published shortly. It
examined more than 3,000 studies conducted since 1986, the last time the
W.H.O. group carried out a systematic review. In the interim, lifetime
smokers in the industrialized world have had plenty of time to contract new
cancers and a huge volume of studies has added to the accumulating knowledge
of tobacco's toxicity.

One disturbing finding was that tobacco smoke causes cancer in many more
parts of the body than previously demonstrated. We've long known that
smoking causes cancers of the lung, oral cavity, bladder and certain other
organs. Now it has been shown to trigger leukemia and cancers of the
stomach, liver, cervix and kidney as well.

Equally troublesome is a firm conclusion, based on more than 50 studies,
that secondhand smoke put into the air by smokers can harm even innocent
bystanders who have never smoked a cigarette in their lives. Such passive
smoking boosts their risk of lung cancer by about 20 percent, especially if
they have experienced prolonged exposure from working or living with
smokers. The experts could not yet determine whether children exposed to
secondhand smoke in the womb or after birth face an increased risk of cancer
as adults, but parents are on notice that their poisonous exhalations are
potentially dangerous.

This bleaker-than-ever view of tobacco's harmful impact makes it imperative
that campaigns be accelerated to curb smoking not only in the industrialized
world, where death rates are high, but also in the developing world, where
the tobacco industry has increasingly focused its marketing might. The new
analysis provides added reason to ban smoking from public places and
workplaces around the world. Continued exposure to the fumes is both
obnoxious and potentially hazardous.

Source:  International Agency for Research on Cancer