By David Lewis
Reuters ‘UDAPEST, and Reuters: Up to half of the non- smokers who die of lung cancer could have caught it from spouses who do smoke, a Medical Congress was told today.
Sir Richard Doll of the Radcliff infirmary in Oxford said these deaths might be due to passive smoking. He was addressing some 8,000 scientists at the 14th Congress of the Geneva based. Inter- national Union against Cancer (UICC),
Summarizing 10 studies from Japan, the US., Greece, Hong Kong and Britain which examined ‘cancer rates in the non-smoking spouses of smokers, Doll said) – more than 3,800 chemicals had been identified in tobacco smoke of which 50 were known to cause cancer in animals.
Some of these are present in higher concentrations in the side- stream smoke, to which non- smokers are mainly exposed, than in the mainstream smoke, including some highly carcinogenic volatile nitrosamines, which may be present in concentration up to 100 times greater, he said.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 29, 1986
