secondhand smoke – Oral Cancer News

Study: Secondhand smoke exposure significantly increases risk of developing mouth cancer

Source: www.studyfinds.org Author: Stephen Beech, SWNS writer When most people think about the dangers of smoking, they probably consider the risks of cancer for the smoker. Although it’s common knowledge secondhand smoke is also dangerous, a new study is revealing just how devastating that exposure can be. Researchers say exposure to secondhand smoke can increase the risk of oral cancer by a staggering 51 percent. Oral cancer, or cancers of the mouth, include those affecting the lip, oral cavity, and throat. These cancers account for almost 450,000 new disease cases and more than 228,000 deaths every year globally. Scientists say that significant risk factors for these forms of cancer include tobacco smoking and use of smokeless tobacco products. Drinking alcohol can also increase the risk of oral cancer. Tobacco smoke represents the largest amount of human exposure to chemical carcinogens and causes a fifth of cancer-related deaths worldwide. However, active smokers are not the only people who suffer from these chemicals. Researchers examining data from 192 countries find 33 percent of male non-smokers, 35 percent of female non-smokers, and 40 percent of children have experienced exposure to involuntary smoking through inhaling secondhand tobacco smoke. Previous research also shows that inhaling secondhand smoke can cause several other diseases, including lung cancer. Although tobacco smoking can cause oral cancer, there is less evidence proving whether or not secondhand smoke also leads to the disease. Long-term smoke exposure doubles cancer risks A team from Britain, Portugal, Spain, and the United States evaluated the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-05-02T12:23:46-07:00May, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Hard-to-watch commercials to make quitting smoking easier

Source: www.nytimes.com Author: Andrew Adam Newman Telling smokers that their habit shortens life expectancy by at least 10 years might seem like an effective way to get them to quit. But it turns out there is something even scarier: living with disfiguring disease. Dr. Tim McAfee, the director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was overseeing focus groups of smokers to help shape a smoking-cessation advertising campaign in 2011 when this became clear. “Telling smokers that you’re going to lose 11 to 12 years of your life expectancy if you continue to smoke, and that if you quit in your 30s you can gain 10 of those back, seemed pretty powerfully motivating to us,” said Dr. McAfee. But smokers’ response to such messages was that it would not happen to them, Dr. McAfee said. What they feared more than an untimely death, it turned out, was chronic illness. “They were less motivated by the fear of dying than the fear of suffering, of disability, of disfigurement, and of being a burden to those around them,” Dr. McAfee said. Introduced in 2012, the C.D.C. campaign, “Tips From Former Smokers,” by Arnold Worldwide in Boston, features people who did not quit until smoking had taken a grave toll. The ads ostensibly offer practical advice about how to function with smoking-related ailments, but the real message is to avoid such predicaments by kicking the habit. A new series of commercials includes one featuring Shawn [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-07-26T08:50:29-07:00July, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Secondhand smoke, not just loud music, may harm teens’ hearing

Source: www.modernmedicine.com Author: staff Teenagers may seem to be not listening but they actually may be having trouble hearing. And the reason may not always be their ubiquitous iPod earbuds, especially if they live in a home where someone smokes, new research has suggested. A study in a recent issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery recommended that pediatricians consider secondhand smoke exposure to be a risk factor for hearing loss in adolescents and screen accordingly. Approximately 60% of American children are exposed to secondhand smoke, which may also have the potential to have an effect on auditory development, leading to sensorineural hearing loss, according to researchers. Researchers examined the risk factors for sensorineural hearing loss among 1,544 nonsmoking participants aged 12 to 19 years in the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Adolescents exposed to secondhand smoke had higher rates of low- and high-frequency hearing loss than peers with no secondhand smoke exposure—and the degree of hearing loss increased with the amount of cotinine (a biomarker for nicotine exposure) in the blood. Because most teens do not have routine hearing exams, pediatricians may want to ask follow-up questions of “tuned out” teens, particularly because 82% of those who had hearing loss were unaware of it. Monitoring the hearing of adolescents exposed to secondhand smoke may head off problems in development and functioning associated with early hearing loss.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-07-30T15:34:55-07:00July, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Philip Morris Int’l purchases license to nicotine system

Source: Associated Press Cigarette maker Philip Morris International Inc. has purchased the rights to a technology that lets users inhale nicotine without smoking. The world's largest nongovernmental cigarette seller told The Associated Press on Thursday it has bought the patent for an aerosol nicotine-delivery system developed by Jed Rose, director of the Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research at Duke University in Durham, N.C. The school does not have a role in Rose's agreement with the company and won't receive any money. Terms were not disclosed. "By avoiding the burning process altogether, finding a way of giving smokers nicotine to inhale but without those toxic substances that we can reduce the death and disease associated with smoking," said Rose, who led the initial studies in the early 1980s that helped pave the way for commercial nicotine patches as a smoking cessation treatment. "Hopefully it's a wave of the future that inhaling combusted, burning tobacco will someday be a thing of the past." Rose said the next step is for Philip Morris International, with offices in New York and Lausanne, Switzerland, to develop a commercial product using the technology. The system differs from current medicinal nicotine inhalers available on the market as stop-smoking aids because it delivers nicotine more rapidly to mimic the nicotine "hit" a cigarette provides smokers. "The other methods of delivering nicotine fall short of providing smokers with the satisfaction that they crave," Rose said. The move is an "important step in our efforts to develop products [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-05-27T10:56:57-07:00May, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Cost of smoking still staggering

Source: www.pe.com Author: Lora Hines The number of smokers nationwide dropped last year, but the amount of money they rack up in health care and financial losses is on the rise, according to federal health officials. In 2007, more than 43 million people smoked, compared to an estimated 45 million smokers in 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite the decrease, average annual smoking-related costs reached nearly $100 billion between 2001 and 2004, compared to $75 billion in 1998, the agency found. Smoking's total annual economic burden comes close to $195 billion, which includes lost productivity. The CDC released the information as the American Cancer Society today marks its 32nd Great American Smokeout, the organization's annual campaign to encourage people to quit smoking. Tobacco use still is the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death in the United States, according to the society. Smoking causes an estimated 438,000 people to die prematurely every year. That includes 38,000 deaths of nonsmokers because of secondhand smoke. Half of all people who keep smoking will die from smoking-related diseases, the organization says. "Quitting smoking is the most important step smokers can take to improve their health and protect the health of nonsmoking family members," said Janet Collins, director of the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. State Program Praised Meanwhile, UC San Francisco researchers earlier this year concluded that the California Tobacco Control Program saved the state $86 billion in health-care costs between [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-11-23T17:56:17-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|