THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1913. CANCER AND COAL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 15 October 1913, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1913. CANCER AND COAL.

A special cable In our issue of yester-' day stated that Sir William Bennett; 1 a well-known English medical authority, had accepted the theory that, there was a connection, between cancer and coal. The "Lancet," which is probably • the most authoritative medical journal in the world, recently .suggested that the use of coal on our;, domestic hearths may be a source of" that moist dreaded of ajl human diseases. Probably there is no .more danger in burning coals than in eat-' ing tomatoes. Some years ago many people confidently believed that thej growing consumption of tomatoes was** at the bottom of the growing percent-; age of deaths from cancer, but the evidence upon which they based their belief simply amounted to this: More tomatoes are eaten, more people are dying of cancer, therefore tomatoes produce cancer. The case against coal is certainly rather stronger, but is by no means conclusive. Still it may be briefly set forth. It has been found in Nairnshire and the Orkneys, where some districts audi islands use cool as fuel and others peat, that the coal-burning districts were invariably mxwh more affected with cancer than those that burned peat. The only «soeption was certain islands which horned peat, but neverthekw showed a Jugher cancer rate. In than oases ike peat was found to be of a peeu-

liar sulphurous kind, more or less resembling coal. The investigator was Mr C. E. Green, F.R.S.E., who cam© to the conclusion foij some reason or other that there was some connection between the local incidence of cancer and the nature of the fuel consumed ill the houses of tho inhabitants. The author's first investigation on this subject dealt with the local prevalence of the disease in the County of Nairnshire, in which the death-rate is notably high. It transpired that the incidence of cancer was apparently li-nited .strictly to those districts in the county in which coal was consumed as fuel, and that only one death from this affection had been observed within ten years in the other portion of the district, in which peat was the only substance burnt. A further series of researches were next undertaken into tho cancer mortality of the County of Orkney, an area made up of a large number of islands, in sotio of which peat alone is used as fuel, in others coal. In the whole district the deaths from cancer formed 1 in 14 of the total number of deaths. Rut while in some islands the cancer rate is 1 in every 7 of all deaths, in others it is only 1 in 27 or. 28, and in Stenness it is 1 in 42. At first sight the relationship of the disease to the consumption of coal was well borne out, islands with a low relative ntortality being found to be peat-consuming districts, while those with a high percentage were users of qoal. It would seem from Mr Green's investigations that there is a relationship between the sulphur contents of the fuel consumed and the mortality from cancer in the districts investigated. He attributes the ill-effects to tho action of sulphur dioxide formed in the process of combustion.