Can passive smoking cause breast cancer?

✍ Scribed by G.H. Miller

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 78 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1074-9098
• DOI: 10.1016/s1074-9098(01)00309-4

✦ Synopsis

Can passive smoking cause breast cancer?

An analysis of the data from the ``Erie County study on smoking and health'' on the effect of smoking on breast cancer incidence showed that active smoking appears to increase breast cancer mortality when compared to nonsmoking women as reported in the January±February edition of this journal. The present report separates nonsmoking women into two categories: (1) nonexposed nonsmoking women and (2) passive smoking exposed women.

The study is based on the detailed population information collected from 12,580 relatives of the deceased in Erie County over a 20-year period from 1972 to 1991. The present study makes a comparison of three different categories:

1. Nonexposed nonsmoking women: Women who did not smoke or who smoked less than 100 cigarettes during their lifetime and were not exposed to tobacco smoke from any other sources. 2. Passive smoking exposed women: Those women nonsmokers who were exposed to smoke from their husbands, other members of the family, at work or from other sources.

Women smokers:

women who smoked all their lives; women who stopped smoking before they died; women who started in later life.

The results from the population data for breast cancer mortality were as follows:

1. Nonexposed nonsmoking women: 3.0%Ð50 cases out of 1,662 deaths. 2. Passive smoking exposed women: 5.1%Ð329 cases out of 6,477 women who were exposed to passive smoke. 3. Smoking women: 5.7%Ð253 cases out of 4,441 deaths. These data provide important information showing the detrimental effects of both active and passive smoking for women when compared with nonsmoking women. The data show that smokers contract breast cancer at a rate that is nearly twice that of nonexposed nonsmoking women. But those nonsmoking women who are exposed to passive smoke from other sources appear to have nearly the same incidence of breast cancer as active smokers.

Therefore, much greater emphasis must be placed upon smoking cessation which will result in reduced deaths rates of breast cancer for those who smoke and those who are exposed to passive smoke.