http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielf...-no-link-between-secondhand-smoke-and-cancer/
A large-scale study found no clear link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer, undercutting the premise of years of litigation including a Florida case that yielded a $350 million settlement.
The article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute details a study of 76,000 women over more than a decade, which found the usual link between smoking and cancer. Lung cancer was 13 times more common in current smokers, and four times more common in former smokers, than in non-smokers.
The study found no statistically significant relationship between lung cancer and exposure to passive smoke, however. Only among women who had lived with a smoker for 30 years or more was there a relationship that the researchers described as “borderline statistical significance.” Over at the Velvet Glove, Iron Fist blog, however, journalist Christopher Snowden notes “there’s no such thing as borderline statistical significance. It’s either significant or it’s not,” and the reported hazard ratio was not.
The study doesn’t cover the many other ill effects of breathing somebody else’s cigarette smoke, of course, which include asthma and possibly cardio-pulmonary disease. I called Gerard Silvestri of the Medical University of South Carolina and member of the National Cancer Institute’s Screening and Prevention Board, and he said the study merely confirms what many researchers already believed.
A large-scale study found no clear link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer, undercutting the premise of years of litigation including a Florida case that yielded a $350 million settlement.
The article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute details a study of 76,000 women over more than a decade, which found the usual link between smoking and cancer. Lung cancer was 13 times more common in current smokers, and four times more common in former smokers, than in non-smokers.
The study found no statistically significant relationship between lung cancer and exposure to passive smoke, however. Only among women who had lived with a smoker for 30 years or more was there a relationship that the researchers described as “borderline statistical significance.” Over at the Velvet Glove, Iron Fist blog, however, journalist Christopher Snowden notes “there’s no such thing as borderline statistical significance. It’s either significant or it’s not,” and the reported hazard ratio was not.
The study doesn’t cover the many other ill effects of breathing somebody else’s cigarette smoke, of course, which include asthma and possibly cardio-pulmonary disease. I called Gerard Silvestri of the Medical University of South Carolina and member of the National Cancer Institute’s Screening and Prevention Board, and he said the study merely confirms what many researchers already believed.
