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Tobacco Free Initiative |
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Key areas and groups Women If on the pill, If a mother-to-be Just by being woman, the female smoker is at added risk to tobacco-induced diseases. And by becoming mother, she endangers the health of her child. ‘Women are subject to all the risks that apply to men,’ including lung cancer, ‘but, in addition, run other specific risks to their sex," says Dr Eileen Crofton, former Director of Scotland’s Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). In the United Kingdom, for example, between the early 1960s and l98Os, mortality from lung cancer more than doubled in women, while in men "it rose by only 10 per cent", she says. Moreover, in women the death rate continues to rise sharply, while in men it is levelling off, and in those under 65 is even declining. Stated differently, women are on the way to achieving equality with men in deaths from lung cancer. Their rate of increase in mortality far exceeds that for men. In Scotland, mortality from lung cancer for females has not only doubled over the last decade but also has become the leading cause of women’s cancer. Lung cancer, she says in a report to the World Health Organization (WHO), now "causes more deaths than breast cancer," resulting in 52 deaths per 100,000 women as against 47 per 100,000 for breast cancer. In England and Wales, lung cancer is close to overtaking breast cancer in the generation of women -- those between ages 65 and 75 today -- who began smoking during World War II. In a report issued by WHO in the World No Tobacco Day 1989 it was clear that as a result of ‘trends towards earlier and heavier smoking in teenage girls," women may develop cancer at an earlier age and after a shorter duration of smoking than men." It is the age smoking begins rather than the number of cigarettes smoked that is decisive. In the countries of the European Economic Community, about 40 per cent of males and females between the ages of 15 and 24 smoke. "Some damage to health occurs from the very outset of smoking," the report says, As smoking increases among women, so will the numbers who die from tobacco-induced diseases -- just as has been the case with men, The Royal College of Physicians has estimated that in Britain smoking is responsible for about 20 per cent of all female deaths from ischaemic heart disease. And it is estimated that in Europe some 30,000 women die each year from lung cancer, Cancers of the pancreas, bladder and larynx are also more common among smokers than non-smokers. So also are chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Such has been the case for men and now it is proving true for women. "Being female is no protection," according to a statement from ASH.
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