Relax, You were had.... SecondHand smoke doesn't cause cancer after all.

[Danno 1,228]

No Clear Link Between Passive Smoking and Lung Cancer

1. Judy Peres

A large prospective cohort study of more than 76,000 women confirmed a strong association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer but found no link between the disease and secondhand smoke.

“The fact that passive smoking may not be strongly associated with lung cancer points to a need to find other risk factors for the disease [in nonsmokers],” said Ange Wang, the Stanford University medical student who presented the study at the June 2013 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

Investigators from Stanford and other research centers looked at data from the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study (WHI-OS). Among 93,676 women aged 50–79 years at enrollment, the study had complete smoking and covariate data (including passive smoking exposure in childhood, adult home, and work) for 76,304 participants. Of those, 901 developed lung cancer over 10.5 mean years of follow-up.

The incidence of lung cancer was 13 times higher in current smokers and four times higher in former smokers than in never-smokers, and the relationship for both current and former smokers depended on level of exposure. However, among women who had never smoked, exposure to passive smoking overall, and to most categories of passive smoking, did not statistically significantly increase lung cancer risk. The only category of exposure that showed a trend toward increased risk was living in the same house with a smoker for 30 years or more. In …

[Full Text of this Article]

http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/05/jnci.djt365.extract

Edited December 20, 2013 by Danno

[Pooky 3,348]

Smoking sucks.

Then it blows.

[GandD 5,966]

Our city passed a no smoking ordnance a few years back. The smoker's argument was that "if we didn't like smoking we could stay home." They are having a hard time swallowing "If you want to smoke, stay home"

[Teddy B 17,251]

Our city passed a no smoking ordnance a few years back. The smoker's argument was that "if we didn't like smoking we could stay home." They are having a hard time swallowing "If you want to smoke, stay home"

More intolerance from the liberals.

[GandD 5,966]

More intolerance from the liberals.

You know what's very tolerable? Not having to wash my shirt every time I go to a sports bar.

[Pooky 3,348]

Our city passed a no smoking ordnance a few years back. The smoker's argument was that "if we didn't like smoking we could stay home." They are having a hard time swallowing "If you want to smoke, stay home"

Then they will start passing legislation to ban smoking in people's homes, like this gem from California http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=20955196

[Sarah Elle-Même 660]

The layperson doesn't understand how cancer works. Its complexities go way over the heads of the general populace. The research never showed second hand smoke had the direct causal link to lung cancer. It is one of many likely factors.

[Penny Lane 8,159]

I watched my grandmother die a slow death from lung cancer after never having picked up a cigarette. My grandfather, on the other hand, smoked around her every day for 50 years and ended up outliving her by 10. Such is life.

Edited December 20, 2013 by Penny Lane

[Teddy B 17,251]

You know what's very tolerable? Not having to wash my shirt every time I go to a sports bar.

You will choke down their second hand smoke and like it! Otherwise you are no better than Phil Robertson.

I think it's laughable to have a "sports bar" that allows smoking. Disconnect much?

I watched my grandmother die a slow death from lung cancer after never having picked up a cigarette. My grandfather, on the other hand, smoked around her every day for 50 years and ended up outliving her by 10. Such is life.

It's strange how things like that work out.

I smoked when I was younger. Best thing I ever did was quit that nasty habit.

[JohnR! 5,495]

Lung cancer is like global warming. It is all made up by atheist scientists.

[Sarah Elle-Même 660]

I watched my grandmother die a slow death from lung cancer after never having picked up a cigarette. My grandfather, on the other hand, smoked around her every day for 50 years and ended up outliving her by 10. Such is life.

About 10% of all lung cancer patients were never smokers. Some spent time around smoking, others did not. For individual non-smoker patients, doctors can only make educated guesses about how their cancer developed - exposure to carcinogens, air pollution, and genetic susceptibility. Unfortunately there are no simple explanations.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Second hand smoke may or may not cause cancer - the study doesn't say either way - but it certainly does sufficient damage to avoid it. From the study quoted:

Jyoti Patel, MD, of Northwestern University School of Medicine said the findings [of a weak link between exposure to second hand smoke and cancer] were not new…. “Passive smoking has many downstream health effects — asthma, upper respiratory infections, other pulmonary diseases, cardiovascular disease — but only borderline increased risk of lung cancer,” said Patel.

So, better keep your smoke to yourself.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I smoked when I was younger. Best thing I ever did was quit that nasty habit.

Yup. Same here.

[GandD 5,966]

Does smoking dope when you were younger count?

[Operator 1,925]

I'm getting rectal cancer from all you liberals blowing smoke up my #######.