Danger in the Cigarette Pack

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 953, 15 November 1957, Page 18

Danger in the Cigarette Pack

This is the text of a talk on health broadcast recently from ZB, ZA, YA and YZ stations of the NZBS

by DR

H. B.

TURBOTT

Deputy-

Director-General of Health

AST year American medical authorities went on record agreeing that there was a positive relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Just lately the Medical Research Council of Great Britain advised the British Government that there was a direct causal connection between tobacco smoking and lung cancer. In Great Britain this disease is now responsible among males for approximately one in 18 of all deaths-of all deaths, please note, not just of cancer deaths-and in females for one in 103 of all deaths. The graph of incidence shows no levelling off. It is still rising. It has been predicted that shortly one in 11 in Great Britain will be dying of lung cancer. The deaths. from lung cancer have greatly increased in other countries in the last quarter century. Many competent enquiries have returned the same answer. These were carried out in Great Britain, the U.S.A., Finland, Germany, Holland, Norway and Switzerland. They show, in every case, a rising death rate as the amount of smoking increases. They show, amongst smokers, these differences: More deaths in heavy smokers than in light smokers, more in cigarette. than in pipe smokers, more in those who continued to smoke than in those who gave it up. From the studies it can be fairly accurately predicted that one in eight of lifelong cigarette smokers will die of lung cancer, The relevant prediction for non-smokers is one in 300. : This is a huge difference. That nonsmokers do get lung cancer at this significantly lower rate is the fact that the diehards seize on. There must therefore be some other cause. It cannot all be blamed on smoking. It is agreed that smoke polluted air could help in the causation, but studies made so far only show that the part played by smoky air is very minor, Garage hands, transport workers, and other workers in smoky atmospheres, have no _ increased risk, Smoky atmospheres cannot be entirely dismissed, for studies also show that among the small number of deaths in non-smokers, there are more in large cities than among those in rural areas. Certain industrial processes can increase the risk of lung cancer, at least five industrial causes being now recognised. Until recently the cancer-causing substances had not been identified in tobacco smoke, but now several such substances have been pin-pointed. Until -E

ow this was accomplished the evidence against tobacco rested mainly on statistical evidence of relationship, and the conviction of many doctors, from their clinical observations, that increaggd cigarette smoking and lung cancer were connected. One of these cancer-pro-ducing substances has experimentally produced cancerous cell growth in human foetal lung tissue kept alive in the laboratory, Tobacco. smoke is a much more complex thing than you would suspect. It consists largely of tiny oily droplets held in suspension in air. These oily droplets are microscopic enough to get everywhere in the lungs and to be retained in the cells. Already over 100 different substances are recognised in these tiny oily droplets, and so far five of these have been proved capable, in certain circumstances, of causing cancer "in animals. The theory that tobacco smoke is the culprit is immeasurably strengthened by these research delvings into the composition of such smoke, Final proof could only be forthcoming by human experimentation, obviously unallowable. The big tobacco combines are naturally concerned. In Great Britain they are assisting the Medical Research Council in continued research. Naturally, if tobacco is blameworthy, they want to remove the stigma and make smoking safe. The canvas has to be broad, wide enough for patterns of research into more than lung cancer. Evidence is building up that other diseases are associated with tobacco smoking, such as cancer of the larynx, chronic bronchitis, and coronary thrombosis. It has to be admitted that the general death rates of smokers greatly exceed those of nonsmokers. To sum up then: It seems obvious that the rising generation should be discouraged from smoking in the present state of our knowledge. If the older folk can’t give it up, they should progressively wean themselves to the minimum found possible, for the evi*dence of danger is definite. -EE