Smoking & Breast Cancer

The Link

“Smoking causes breast cancer. So does second-hand smoke.”

These are the conclusions of a Canadian-led panel that poured over more than 100 recent studies in search of the linkages.

Anthony Miller, associate director of research at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health said that for a long time, there had been academic debate on the link between breast cancer and second hand smoke. As recently as 2006, a U.S. Surgeon General report had determined that research evidence was “suggestive but not sufficient”.

“But our reanalysis of all the evidence, we concluded something quite different,” said Miller in a published news report in Toronto Star in April.

The panel found evidence that smoking could increase breast cancer risks by 40 to 50 per cent in some cases. And in genetically susceptible women the risk could be doubled, he said.

The new analysis also showed that there was a significant link between breast cancer and second hand smoke in pre-menopausal women and a strong connection between the illness and active smoking in women of all ages.

Although there is not yet enough data to determine how many cases of breast cancer could be traced directly back to tobacco, the report should help to curb smoking among women, for whom breast cancer often holds a unique and particular terror, Miller said.

Women Smokers in the Philippines

Breast cancer is the second leading type of cancer in the Philippines and the first among women with risks increasing after age 30. In Asia, the Philippines has the highest incidence rate of breast cancer and is considered to have the ninth highest incidence rate in the world today.

In Southeast Asia, the Philippines has the highest smoking prevalence among young women. The Tobacco Atlas 2009 also puts the Philippines at No. 16 among the list of Top 20 countries with the highest female smoking population in the world. This is translated as roughly 12.3% of adult females smoke. This is far worse compared to the 2006 list that placed the Philippines at No. 26.

Smoking prevalence among adult females in the Philippines is twice higher than in China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, or Singapore. In the said Asian countries, the said prevalence, based on standardized data, is between 1-4% while the Philippines is already at 8.5%.

As for the female youth in the country, the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (2007) revealed that 19.6% of girls aged 13-15 smoke while more that 60% of girls are said to be exposed to second hand smoke.

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Photo from Flickr