Editor’s NOTE: On one of several cross-country road trips with Dr. Kelley during 1999 or 2000, Kelley expressed these very facts to me. “Smoking…,” he said, “may in fact contribute towards ill health, but in and unto itself does NOT cause cancer. (Ed.)

Scientists from Stanford University claim only people living with a smoker for over 30 years might be more likely to develop lung cancer

The research, which studied 76,000 women, adds to a body of evidence that argues there is no link between second-hand smoke and lung cancer

There is no clear link between passive smoking and lung cancer, American scientists have claimed.

Researchers from Stanford University say their findings add to a body of evidence which shows that while smoking cigarettes is strongly linked to cancer, passive smoking is not.
Their large U.S. study of more than 76,000 women did not find a link between the disease and secondhand smoke.

Only people who live in the same house as a smoker for over 30 years might be more likely to develop lung cancer, they say.

‘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, a medical student at Stanford University, who presented the study at the meeting of American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

Researchers from the university and other institutions examined data from the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study to come up with their controversial findings.
Data for 76,304 participants about passive smoking exposure in childhood, the adult home and work for was studied.

Of those that took part, 901 people developed lung cancer over 10.5 years of follow-up.
The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute said the incidence of lung cancer was 13 times higher in current smokers and four times higher in former smokers than those who have never smoked cigarettes.

Unsurprisingly, the risk of the disease for both current and former smokers depended on their level of exposure.

However, among the women who had never smoked and those who were exposed to secondhand smoke, there was not any ‘significant’ statistical increase in 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,’ the researchers claimed.

While the latest study might surprise many, it is not the first research to come to the same conclusion.

Writing for The Telegraph, author and journalist James Delingpole pointed out that between 1959 and 1989, two staunch anti-smoking campaigners called James Enstrom and Geoffrey Kabat surveyed 118,094 Californians in a bid to prove that smoking had damaging side effects to smokers’ nearest and dearest.

However, they reportedly discovered that exposure to ‘environmental tobacco’ or secondhand smoke, did not significantly increase a person’s risk of lung cancer or heart disease – even if they had been exposed for long periods of time.

Mr Delingpole also said that the World Health Organisation came to a similar conclusion in 1998 after a seven-year study, as well as the Greater London Assembly and the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee.

But despite a growing body of evidence, politicians still went ahead with the smoking ban between 2006 and 2007 in the UK.

Epidemiologist Dr Geoffrey Kabat, an advisor to the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, said the latest study does not come as a surprise.

He told ACSH: ‘The association is weak and inconsistent.’

‘We should not overstate the weak and uncertain association [of lung cancer] with passive smoking and should be looking for other, larger risk factors for lung cancer occurring in never smokers.’

Posted at the Daily Mail, December 19, 2013.

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