Secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, study says

3/8/2005
Secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, study says
By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO - Scientists at an influential California agency have
concluded that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, a finding that
could have broad impact on cancer research and lead to even tougher
anti-smoking regulations.

Although recent studies have linked smoking to breast cancer, no major
public health group, including the American Cancer Society, the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute,
has declared it a cause of the disease that kills 40,000 women each
year in the USA.

The finding by scientists for the Air Resources Board - whose early
efforts to regulate auto emissions were a model for the rest of the
country - could fuel workplace smoking bans in more states. And it is
likely to refocus the scientific debate over the link between smoking
and breast cancer.

"I have to say without reservation it will stimulate continued and
accelerated scientific evaluation of the smoking and breast cancer
issue," says Terry Pechacek, associate director for science in the
CDC's office on smoking and health.

A scientific review panel is expected to approve the report as early as
Monday and forward it to the Air Resources Board, which has broad state
authority to regulate air pollution.

The 1,200-page report analyzes new data on the extent of Californians'
exposure to secondhand smoke and more than 1,000 studies of health
effects from secondhand smoke.

The conclusion that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, particularly
in younger women, challenges conventional scientific thinking because
most studies, until recently, had found no connection between female
smokers and breast cancer.

But California scientists based their conclusion on recent human
studies that they determined had more careful assessments of long-term
exposure to tobacco smoke. The report also gave more weight to
toxicology evidence from animal studies than previous studies by the
surgeon general and others. It's well-documented that chemicals from
cigarettes cause breast cancer in lab animals.

Overall, women exposed to secondhand smoke have up to a 90% greater
risk of breast cancer, the report says. It says secondhand smoke kills
as many as 73,400 a year in the USA.

The report did not estimate the number of additional new breast cancer
cases annually, and scientists did not calculate risk levels based on
doses of secondhand smoke.

Tobacco companies, in public comments filed with the board, say the
report gives little weight to studies that found no breast cancer
connection.

A new surgeon general's report on secondhand smoke is expected this
year.

"The topic is still under review," says the report's senior scientific
editor, Jonathan Samet, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins
University.

"It's controversial," Samet says. "Concluding that passive smoke causes
breast cancer has potentially powerful implications for tobacco control
and breast cancer control. So there has been tension over it."

-----------------------------

3/8/2005
Firestorm could be brewing
By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO - Cancer scientists are split over whether smoking
causes breast cancer, but they agree on one thing: The debate is far
more complex than linking smoking to lung cancer or heart disease.

The U.S. surgeon general says tobacco smoke - whether secondhand or
inhaled by smokers - can cause both those killers. Only the tobacco
industry disputes the evidence. But breast cancer, a disease that
strikes 270,000 U.S. women a year, is another matter. Though a
California government report is the first to affirm secondhand smoke as
a cause, it's far from the last word.

Chemicals in cigarette smoke cause breast cancer in rats; the chemicals
are found in human breast tissue. Recent studies of groups of women
show a breast cancer-smoking link. But science has been slow - too
slow, breast cancer advocates say - to indict tobacco.

"If we spend this much time looking at each chemical out there that
could cause breast cancer or other cancers, we'll all be dead before
the analysis is completed," says Nancy Evans, a health science
consultant with the Breast Cancer Fund, a national group that focuses
on prevention.

Scientific caution is partly a result of Big Tobacco's clout. "The
tobacco industry is so wealthy and powerful that you want what you say
to be incontrovertible," says Michael Thun, who heads the American
Cancer Society's epidemiological research.

The industry disputed the California findings in public comments
included in the report. Three tobacco companies declined interview
requests.

Secondhand vs. active smoking

But a bigger reason is uncertainty about the data. California
scientists who concluded that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer and
whose report is likely to be approved next week by a review panel were
persuaded by "the weight of evidence."

Much of that was newer, better studies, says Melanie Marty, the section
chief with the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment who
supervised the report. "What you want is multiple studies that show an
effect," she says. "As time has gone by, more and more have shown an
effect."

Marty's team looked at older studies that "didn't ask enough questions
to figure out who was really exposed (to secondhand smoke) and who
wasn't." But in six recent studies that were careful to take women
who'd been exposed out of control groups, the risks went up, she says.

The scientists also saw a breast cancer link to active smoking in the
newer studies, though not as distinct as with secondhand smoke. That
was important, Marty says, because the scientific consensus has been
that active smoking doesn't put women at risk. The California
scientists didn't calculate the risk for active smoking.

The lower risk seen for active smoking, which bathes tissue with more
carcinogens than secondhand smoke, is probably because of estrogen,
Marty says. The female hormone raises breast cancer risk, but a leading
theory is that big doses of inhaled smoke blunt its ability to fuel
tumor growth, while smaller secondhand doses don't.

Health risks to children

Women exposed to secondhand smoke have a 26% to 90% higher risk of
breast cancer, the report says. That broad range is due to wide
disparity in exposure - a woman married to a three-pack-a-day smoker
for 30 years vs. a woman exposed for a short time. The greater the
exposure, the earlier the age of exposure - particularly before
puberty and a first pregnancy - the higher the risks, the report
said.

The California scientists gave more weight to toxicology - whether
chemicals in smoke cause breast cancer in lab animals - than the
surgeon general or the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Toxicology provides "biological plausibility," Marty says. "If studies
don't bring it forward as a reason why all these things make sense,
they're missing a piece of the puzzle."

Whether the California breast cancer findings - and newer studies
they're partly based on - influence a surgeon general's report on
secondhand smoke due this year is uncertain.

"I'd be very surprised to see that change," says Barbara Brenner,
executive director of Breast Cancer Action. "There's more caution in
the scientific community than is necessary in the interest of the
public's health. What science understands as proof is almost an
ever-retreating goal."

The National Cancer Institute published the Air Resources Board's
widely praised 1997 secondhand smoke report. It found evidence of a
breast cancer link inconclusive. "We need to take this new report
seriously, look at it closely," says Deborah Winn, chief of an NCI
epidemiology branch.

Even if the review panel approves the new report, the board may not. It
took no action and forwarded the 1997 report to the state health
department, deciding it had no authority to regulate indoor pollution.

But the new report has measurements on outdoor secondhand smoke from
several California locations. An amusement park had the highest
nicotine concentrations. Lawyers are researching whether the board can
ban smoking in vehicles carrying children, spokesman Jerry Martin says.

A bill to do that failed narrowly last year in the California
Legislature after heavy tobacco industry lobbying.

The board might find a rationale now. In 1999, the Legislature expanded
its scope, ordering it to assess pollutants' health risks to children
because of their greater susceptibility. Other than private homes and a
few workplace exceptions, vehicles are the only major category of
enclosed space where smoking is permitted in California.

"It's fair to say there's some interest in going further than they did
in 1997," Martin says. The 1967 law that created the board says it must
act to protect public health even without "undisputed scientific
evidence."

No states prohibit smoking in vehicles. "That would be significant,"
says Brenner of Breast Cancer Action. "The more we restrain where
people smoke publicly, the more likely they are to smoke in the places
where they can - homes and cars."

BAN BANDWAGON

States that enacted smoking bans for workplaces, bars or restaurants,
or for all three:

California
Utah
South Dakota
Delaware
Florida
New York
Connecticut
Maine
Idaho
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Vermont

Source: USA TODAY research; American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation

---------------------

Unfortunately ... this issue has huge PR $$$$ thrown at
junkscience.com and their omnipresent flacks and paid off scientists
....

finally the truth is emerging ...

Thanks for the post.


On 9 Mar 2005 09:32:31 -0800, "MrPepper11" wrote:

3/8/2005
Secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, study says
By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO - Scientists at an influential California agency have
concluded that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, a finding that
could have broad impact on cancer research and lead to even tougher
anti-smoking regulations.

Although recent studies have linked smoking to breast cancer, no major
public health group, including the American Cancer Society, the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute,
has declared it a cause of the disease that kills 40,000 women each
year in the USA.

The finding by scientists for the Air Resources Board - whose early
efforts to regulate auto emissions were a model for the rest of the
country - could fuel workplace smoking bans in more states. And it is
likely to refocus the scientific debate over the link between smoking
and breast cancer.

"I have to say without reservation it will stimulate continued and
accelerated scientific evaluation of the smoking and breast cancer
issue," says Terry Pechacek, associate director for science in the
CDC's office on smoking and health.

A scientific review panel is expected to approve the report as early as
Monday and forward it to the Air Resources Board, which has broad state
authority to regulate air pollution.

The 1,200-page report analyzes new data on the extent of Californians'
exposure to secondhand smoke and more than 1,000 studies of health
effects from secondhand smoke.

The conclusion that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, particularly
in younger women, challenges conventional scientific thinking because
most studies, until recently, had found no connection between female
smokers and breast cancer.

But California scientists based their conclusion on recent human
studies that they determined had more careful assessments of long-term
exposure to tobacco smoke. The report also gave more weight to
toxicology evidence from animal studies than previous studies by the
surgeon general and others. It's well-documented that chemicals from
cigarettes cause breast cancer in lab animals.

Overall, women exposed to secondhand smoke have up to a 90% greater
risk of breast cancer, the report says. It says secondhand smoke kills
as many as 73,400 a year in the USA.

The report did not estimate the number of additional new breast cancer
cases annually, and scientists did not calculate risk levels based on
doses of secondhand smoke.

Tobacco companies, in public comments filed with the board, say the
report gives little weight to studies that found no breast cancer
connection.

A new surgeon general's report on secondhand smoke is expected this
year.

"The topic is still under review," says the report's senior scientific
editor, Jonathan Samet, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins
University.

"It's controversial," Samet says. "Concluding that passive smoke causes
breast cancer has potentially powerful implications for tobacco control
and breast cancer control. So there has been tension over it."

-----------------------------

3/8/2005
Firestorm could be brewing
By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO - Cancer scientists are split over whether smoking
causes breast cancer, but they agree on one thing: The debate is far
more complex than linking smoking to lung cancer or heart disease.

The U.S. surgeon general says tobacco smoke - whether secondhand or
inhaled by smokers - can cause both those killers. Only the tobacco
industry disputes the evidence. But breast cancer, a disease that
strikes 270,000 U.S. women a year, is another matter. Though a
California government report is the first to affirm secondhand smoke as
a cause, it's far from the last word.

Chemicals in cigarette smoke cause breast cancer in rats; the chemicals
are found in human breast tissue. Recent studies of groups of women
show a breast cancer-smoking link. But science has been slow - too
slow, breast cancer advocates say - to indict tobacco.

"If we spend this much time looking at each chemical out there that
could cause breast cancer or other cancers, we'll all be dead before
the analysis is completed," says Nancy Evans, a health science
consultant with the Breast Cancer Fund, a national group that focuses
on prevention.

Scientific caution is partly a result of Big Tobacco's clout. "The
tobacco industry is so wealthy and powerful that you want what you say
to be incontrovertible," says Michael Thun, who heads the American
Cancer Society's epidemiological research.

The industry disputed the California findings in public comments
included in the report. Three tobacco companies declined interview
requests.

Secondhand vs. active smoking

But a bigger reason is uncertainty about the data. California
scientists who concluded that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer and
whose report is likely to be approved next week by a review panel were
persuaded by "the weight of evidence."

Much of that was newer, better studies, says Melanie Marty, the section
chief with the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment who
supervised the report. "What you want is multiple studies that show an
effect," she says. "As time has gone by, more and more have shown an
effect."

Marty's team looked at older studies that "didn't ask enough questions
to figure out who was really exposed (to secondhand smoke) and who
wasn't." But in six recent studies that were careful to take women
who'd been exposed out of control groups, the risks went up, she says.

The scientists also saw a breast cancer link to active smoking in the
newer studies, though not as distinct as with secondhand smoke. That
was important, Marty says, because the scientific consensus has been
that active smoking doesn't put women at risk. The California
scientists didn't calculate the risk for active smoking.

The lower risk seen for active smoking, which bathes tissue with more
carcinogens than secondhand smoke, is probably because of estrogen,
Marty says. The female hormone raises breast cancer risk, but a leading
theory is that big doses of inhaled smoke blunt its ability to fuel
tumor growth, while smaller secondhand doses don't.

Health risks to children

Women exposed to secondhand smoke have a 26% to 90% higher risk of
breast cancer, the report says. That broad range is due to wide
disparity in exposure - a woman married to a three-pack-a-day smoker
for 30 years vs. a woman exposed for a short time. The greater the
exposure, the earlier the age of exposure - particularly before
puberty and a first pregnancy - the higher the risks, the report
said.

The California scientists gave more weight to toxicology - whether
chemicals in smoke cause breast cancer in lab animals - than the
surgeon general or the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Toxicology provides "biological plausibility," Marty says. "If studies
don't bring it forward as a reason why all these things make sense,
they're missing a piece of the puzzle."

Whether the California breast cancer findings - and newer studies
they're partly based on - influence a surgeon general's report on
secondhand smoke due this year is uncertain.

"I'd be very surprised to see that change," says Barbara Brenner,
executive director of Breast Cancer Action. "There's more caution in
the scientific community than is necessary in the interest of the
public's health. What science understands as proof is almost an
ever-retreating goal."

The National Cancer Institute published the Air Resources Board's
widely praised 1997 secondhand smoke report. It found evidence of a
breast cancer link inconclusive. "We need to take this new report
seriously, look at it closely," says Deborah Winn, chief of an NCI
epidemiology branch.

Even if the review panel approves the new report, the board may not. It
took no action and forwarded the 1997 report to the state health
department, deciding it had no authority to regulate indoor pollution.

But the new report has measurements on outdoor secondhand smoke from
several California locations. An amusement park had the highest
nicotine concentrations. Lawyers are researching whether the board can
ban smoking in vehicles carrying children, spokesman Jerry Martin says.

A bill to do that failed narrowly last year in the California
Legislature after heavy tobacco industry lobbying.

The board might find a rationale now. In 1999, the Legislature expanded
its scope, ordering it to assess pollutants' health risks to children
because of their greater susceptibility. Other than private homes and a
few workplace exceptions, vehicles are the only major category of
enclosed space where smoking is permitted in California.

"It's fair to say there's some interest in going further than they did
in 1997," Martin says. The 1967 law that created the board says it must
act to protect public health even without "undisputed scientific
evidence."

No states prohibit smoking in vehicles. "That would be significant,"
says Brenner of Breast Cancer Action. "The more we restrain where
people smoke publicly, the more likely they are to smoke in the places
where they can - homes and cars."

BAN BANDWAGON

States that enacted smoking bans for workplaces, bars or restaurants,
or for all three:

California
Utah
South Dakota
Delaware
Florida
New York
Connecticut
Maine
Idaho
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Vermont

Source: USA TODAY research; American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation

---------------------

On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:10:18 -0600, Ilena Rose
wrote:


Unfortunately ... this issue has huge PR $$$$ thrown at
junkscience.com and their omnipresent flacks and paid off scientists
...

finally the truth is emerging ...

Thanks for the post.


On 9 Mar 2005 09:32:31 -0800, "MrPepper11" wrote:

3/8/2005
Secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, study says
By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO - Scientists at an influential California agency have
concluded that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, a finding that
could have broad impact on cancer research and lead to even tougher
anti-smoking regulations.

Although recent studies have linked smoking to breast cancer, no major
public health group, including the American Cancer Society, the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute,
has declared it a cause of the disease that kills 40,000 women each
year in the USA.

The finding by scientists for the Air Resources Board - whose early
efforts to regulate auto emissions were a model for the rest of the
country - could fuel workplace smoking bans in more states. And it is
likely to refocus the scientific debate over the link between smoking
and breast cancer.

"I have to say without reservation it will stimulate continued and
accelerated scientific evaluation of the smoking and breast cancer
issue," says Terry Pechacek, associate director for science in the
CDC's office on smoking and health.

A scientific review panel is expected to approve the report as early as
Monday and forward it to the Air Resources Board, which has broad state
authority to regulate air pollution.

The 1,200-page report analyzes new data on the extent of Californians'
exposure to secondhand smoke and more than 1,000 studies of health
effects from secondhand smoke.

The conclusion that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, particularly
in younger women, challenges conventional scientific thinking because
most studies, until recently, had found no connection between female
smokers and breast cancer.

But California scientists based their conclusion on recent human
studies that they determined had more careful assessments of long-term
exposure to tobacco smoke. The report also gave more weight to
toxicology evidence from animal studies than previous studies by the
surgeon general and others. It's well-documented that chemicals from
cigarettes cause breast cancer in lab animals.

Overall, women exposed to secondhand smoke have up to a 90% greater
risk of breast cancer, the report says. It says secondhand smoke kills
as many as 73,400 a year in the USA.

The report did not estimate the number of additional new breast cancer
cases annually, and scientists did not calculate risk levels based on
doses of secondhand smoke.

Tobacco companies, in public comments filed with the board, say the
report gives little weight to studies that found no breast cancer
connection.

A new surgeon general's report on secondhand smoke is expected this
year.

"The topic is still under review," says the report's senior scientific
editor, Jonathan Samet, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins
University.

"It's controversial," Samet says. "Concluding that passive smoke causes
breast cancer has potentially powerful implications for tobacco control
and breast cancer control. So there has been tension over it."

-----------------------------

3/8/2005
Firestorm could be brewing
By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO - Cancer scientists are split over whether smoking
causes breast cancer, but they agree on one thing: The debate is far
more complex than linking smoking to lung cancer or heart disease.

The U.S. surgeon general says tobacco smoke - whether secondhand or
inhaled by smokers - can cause both those killers. Only the tobacco
industry disputes the evidence. But breast cancer, a disease that
strikes 270,000 U.S. women a year, is another matter. Though a
California government report is the first to affirm secondhand smoke as
a cause, it's far from the last word.

Chemicals in cigarette smoke cause breast cancer in rats; the chemicals
are found in human breast tissue. Recent studies of groups of women
show a breast cancer-smoking link. But science has been slow - too
slow, breast cancer advocates say - to indict tobacco.

"If we spend this much time looking at each chemical out there that
could cause breast cancer or other cancers, we'll all be dead before
the analysis is completed," says Nancy Evans, a health science
consultant with the Breast Cancer Fund, a national group that focuses
on prevention.

Scientific caution is partly a result of Big Tobacco's clout. "The
tobacco industry is so wealthy and powerful that you want what you say
to be incontrovertible," says Michael Thun, who heads the American
Cancer Society's epidemiological research.

The industry disputed the California findings in public comments
included in the report. Three tobacco companies declined interview
requests.

Secondhand vs. active smoking

But a bigger reason is uncertainty about the data. California
scientists who concluded that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer and
whose report is likely to be approved next week by a review panel were
persuaded by "the weight of evidence."

Much of that was newer, better studies, says Melanie Marty, the section
chief with the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment who
supervised the report. "What you want is multiple studies that show an
effect," she says. "As time has gone by, more and more have shown an
effect."

Marty's team looked at older studies that "didn't ask enough questions
to figure out who was really exposed (to secondhand smoke) and who
wasn't." But in six recent studies that were careful to take women
who'd been exposed out of control groups, the risks went up, she says.

The scientists also saw a breast cancer link to active smoking in the
newer studies, though not as distinct as with secondhand smoke. That
was important, Marty says, because the scientific consensus has been
that active smoking doesn't put women at risk. The California
scientists didn't calculate the risk for active smoking.

The lower risk seen for active smoking, which bathes tissue with more
carcinogens than secondhand smoke, is probably because of estrogen,
Marty says. The female hormone raises breast cancer risk, but a leading
theory is that big doses of inhaled smoke blunt its ability to fuel
tumor growth, while smaller secondhand doses don't.

Health risks to children

Women exposed to secondhand smoke have a 26% to 90% higher risk of
breast cancer, the report says. That broad range is due to wide
disparity in exposure - a woman married to a three-pack-a-day smoker
for 30 years vs. a woman exposed for a short time. The greater the
exposure, the earlier the age of exposure - particularly before
puberty and a first pregnancy - the higher the risks, the report
said.

The California scientists gave more weight to toxicology - whether
chemicals in smoke cause breast cancer in lab animals - than the
surgeon general or the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Toxicology provides "biological plausibility," Marty says. "If studies
don't bring it forward as a reason why all these things make sense,
they're missing a piece of the puzzle."

Whether the California breast cancer findings - and newer studies
they're partly based on - influence a surgeon general's report on
secondhand smoke due this year is uncertain.

"I'd be very surprised to see that change," says Barbara Brenner,
executive director of Breast Cancer Action. "There's more caution in
the scientific community than is necessary in the interest of the
public's health. What science understands as proof is almost an
ever-retreating goal."

The National Cancer Institute published the Air Resources Board's
widely praised 1997 secondhand smoke report. It found evidence of a
breast cancer link inconclusive. "We need to take this new report
seriously, look at it closely," says Deborah Winn, chief of an NCI
epidemiology branch.

Even if the review panel approves the new report, the board may not. It
took no action and forwarded the 1997 report to the state health
department, deciding it had no authority to regulate indoor pollution.

But the new report has measurements on outdoor secondhand smoke from
several California locations. An amusement park had the highest
nicotine concentrations. Lawyers are researching whether the board can
ban smoking in vehicles carrying children, spokesman Jerry Martin says.

A bill to do that failed narrowly last year in the California
Legislature after heavy tobacco industry lobbying.

The board might find a rationale now. In 1999, the Legislature expanded
its scope, ordering it to assess pollutants' health risks to children
because of their greater susceptibility. Other than private homes and a
few workplace exceptions, vehicles are the only major category of
enclosed space where smoking is permitted in California.

"It's fair to say there's some interest in going further than they did
in 1997," Martin says. The 1967 law that created the board says it must
act to protect public health even without "undisputed scientific
evidence."

No states prohibit smoking in vehicles. "That would be significant,"
says Brenner of Breast Cancer Action. "The more we restrain where
people smoke publicly, the more likely they are to smoke in the places
where they can - homes and cars."

BAN BANDWAGON

States that enacted smoking bans for workplaces, bars or restaurants,
or for all three:

California
Utah
South Dakota
Delaware
Florida
New York
Connecticut
Maine
Idaho
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Vermont

Source: USA TODAY research; American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation

---------------------

further proof that smoking among other people is both criminal to them
and suicidal to oneself.