subject: Smoking And Cancer [print this page] Different types of cancers are induced by tobacco. Tobacco in all its forms is dangerous. Chewing tobacco, cigarette smoking and cigar smoking pose threat to the human body. With every cigarette that one smokes, he comes closer to the danger zone of tobacco associated cancer. Almost 30 percent of all cancer deaths are attributed to smoking in the United States. This amounts to almost 155000 people each year. One third of all cancer deaths in the UK are also associated to smoking. This reckons to about 42800 deaths per year.
Smoking and lung cancer are known to be closely related, but there are a number of other cancers which are solely or closely associated with tobacco use and cigarette smoking. They are cancer of the lung, cancer of the larynx, cancer of the pharynx, cancer of the lip, cancer of the tongue, cancer of the mouth, cancer of the throat, cancer of the esophagus, cancer of the bladder, cancer of the kidney, cancer of the pancreas, cancer of the cervix, cancer of the colorectal, cancer of the nasal cavities, cancer of the nasal sinuses, cancer of the stomach, cancer of the liver and myeloid leukemia.
Studies have shown another threat of cancer for women who smoked cigarettes for more than 40 years. It has been found that such women have 60% higher susceptibility of developing breast cancer than non-smoking women. Ladies who smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day for about 40 years had a greater threat of about 83%.
There are four factors which affect the development of tobacco associated cancers in men and women. They are total life time exposure to cigarette smoke, number of cigarettes smoked per day, age at which one begins to smoke and body resistance to tobacco chemicals. The lesser the age when one begins to smoke, the greater are the chances of developing smoking related cancers.
