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Why People Smoke, Why They Shouldn’tAwake!—1986 | July 22
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Research published in the magazine Science stated: “Cigarette smoking is the major single known cause of cancer mortality in the United States, and tobacco’s contribution to all cancer deaths is estimated to be 30 percent.” Most of this 30 percent is from lung cancer.
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Why People Smoke, Why They Shouldn’tAwake!—1986 | July 22
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Breast cancer used to be the biggest killer of American women—now it is lung cancer. It has skyrocketed 500 percent since 1950; it killed over 38,000 women last year.
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Why People Smoke, Why They Shouldn’tAwake!—1986 | July 22
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Chemicals in cigarette smoke cause genetic damage that could initiate cancer in pregnant women and in their fetuses.
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Why People Smoke, Why They Shouldn’tAwake!—1986 | July 22
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Whether you chew or suck on moist snuff held between cheek and gum (called dipping), you are asking for oral cancer, gum disease, and nicotine addiction. Cancer develops where the tobacco touches cheek and gum, and the malignancy often spreads to other parts of the body. Smokeless tobacco contains 20 or more cancer-causing nitrosamines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The Worldwatch report said that over the last 20 years the use of chewing tobacco and snuff increased 40 percent, with a corresponding increase in oral cancer.
Victims of Others’ Smoke
Tobacco users endanger not only their own health but also that of others. More than ten studies last year showed that passive smoking—inhaling the smoke from the cigarettes of others—caused lung cancer in the nonsmoking spouses of smokers. Research in Japan, West Germany, Greece, and the United States indicates that “spouses of smokers are two or three times more likely to get lung cancer than those of nonsmokers.” One study “estimated that passive smoking in the United States causes more cancer deaths than all regulated industrial air pollutants combined.” Canadian scientists have reported that there is no safe level for secondhand smoke. It contains “over 50 known carcinogens and 3,800 chemical compounds.” One medical journal said: “The more smokers one has lived with, the higher one’s risk of cancer.”
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