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Cancer Treatment and Investigating Asocciation form UK

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Read the key facts about smoking and cancer risk, and find the supporting evidence from academic research and scientific studies to see why we say what we do.

Experts agree that tobacco is the single biggest avoidable cause of cancer in the world. [1,2] Smoking causes over a quarter (28 per cent) of cancer deaths in the UK and 3 in 20 cancer cases. [3,4]

And smoking doesn't only cause cancer. It also causes tens of thousands of deaths each year in the UK from other conditions, including heart and lung problems. [3] Tobacco was responsible for more than 100 million deaths worldwide in the 20th Century.[5] The World Health Organisation has estimated that, if current trends continue, tobacco could cause a billion deaths in the 21st Century.[5]

Up to two thirds of all long-term smokers will be killed by their habit. [6-8] On average smokers lose around a decade of life compared with non-smokers. [1,3,7-9]

1. IARC. Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans VOLUME 83 Tobacco Smoke and Involuntary Smoking. 2004;83.

2. Swerdlow AJ, Peto R, Doll R. Epidemiology of cancer. In: Oxford Textbook of Medicine. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press; 2010:299-332.

3. Peto R, Lopez AD, Boreham J, Thun MJ. Mortality from smoking in developed countries 1950 - 2005 (or later).

7. Doll R, Peto R, Boreham J, Sutherland I. Mortality in relation to smoking: 50 years' observations on male British doctors. BMJ. 2004;328(7455):1519. doi:10.1136/bmj.38142.554479.AE.

8. Banks E, Joshy G, Weber MF, et al. Tobacco smoking and all-cause mortality in a large Australian cohort study: findings from a mature epidemic with current low smoking prevalence. BMC Med. 2015;13:38. doi:10.1186/s12916-015-0281-z.

9. Jha P. Avoidable global cancer deaths and total deaths from smoking. Nat Rev Cancer. 2009;9(9):655-664. doi:10.1038/nrc2703.

Smoking causes around 7 in 10 lung cancer cases in the UK [1,2]. Lung cancer is by far the most common cause of cancer death in the UK [1,3].

People who smoke were first shown to be more likely to develop lung cancer than non-smokers in 1950 [4]. This study found that people who smoked around 20 cigarettes a day had 26 times the lung cancer risk of non-smokers. And people who smoked around 3 cigarettes a day still had 6 times the lung cancer risk of non-smokers.

After these first results came out, UK scientists began a large long-running study of smoking in British doctors, which Cancer Research UK has helped to fund, that has told us a lot about the dangers of smoking [5]. This study has found similarly huge risks associated with smoking. Men who smoked 25 or more cigarettes a day had over 24 times the risk of dying from lung cancer as men who had never smoked [6].

There are long time lags between changes in the number of people who smoke and the number of people who develop lung cancer due to smoking [7-9]. So rates of lung cancer in the UK reflect smoking rates decades earlier.

We cannot exactly calculate a person's lung cancer risk based on how many cigarettes they smoke or the number of years they have been a smoker. But research has shown that lung cancer risk is greatest among those who smoke the most cigarettes, over the longest period of time, having started at the youngest age [9,10].

Although both have an effect on risk, the number of years someone has spent smoking is more important than the number of cigarettes they smoke a day [11]. This means that overall, smoking 20 cigarettes a day for 20 years is even worse for you than smoking 40 a day for 10 years.

1. Peto R, Lopez AD, Boreham J, Thun MJ. Mortality from smoking in developed countries 1950 - 2005 (or later).

4. Doll R, Hill AB. Smoking and carcinoma of the lung: Preliminary report. Br Med J. 1950;2(4682):739-748.

5. Doll R, Hill AB. The mortality of doctors in relation to their smoking habits: a preliminary report. Br Med J. 1954;1(4877):1451-1455.

6. Doll R, Peto R, Boreham J, Sutherland I. Mortality in relation to smoking: 50 years' observations on male British doctors. BMJ. 2004;328(7455):1519. doi:10.1136/bmj.38142.554479.AE.

7. Jha P. Avoidable global cancer deaths and total deaths from smoking. Nat Rev Cancer. 2009;9(9):655-664. doi:10.1038/nrc2703.

8. WHO. Global health risks: mortality and burden of disease attributable to selected major risks. 2009.

9. IARC. Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans VOLUME 83 Tobacco Smoke and Involuntary Smoking. 2004;83.

10. IARC. Personal Habits and Indoor Combustions, Volume 100 E, A Review of Human Carcinogens. 2012;100.

11. Flanders WD, Lally CA, Zhu B, Henley SJ, Thun MJ. Lung Cancer Mortality in Relation to Age , Duration of Smoking , and Daily Cigarette Consumption : Results from Cancer Prevention Study II Lung Cancer Mortality in Relation to Age , Duration of Smoking , and Daily Cigarette Consumption : Results from Canc. 2003:6556-6562

Although the risk of an early death increases the more you smoke, people who think of themselves as light or occasional smokers also have an increased risk compared to people who don't smoke [1,2]. One study found that people who smoked up to 4 cigarettes a day were about 50 per cent more likely to die prematurely than non-smokers [1]. And the Million Women study found that women who smoked up to 10 cigarettes a day were twice as likely to die prematurely than non-smokers [2].

Large studies looking at the health risks of smoking, such as the British Doctors Study and the Million Women Study, have found that people smoking between 1 and 14 cigarettes a day are at least 7 times as likely to die from lung cancer compared to people who have never smoked [2-4]. And one study found people who smoked between 5 and 9 cigarettes a day had a higher risk of dying from lung cancer, or any type of cancer [1].

1. Bjartveit K, Tverdal A. Health consequences of smoking 1-4 cigarettes per day. Tob Control. 2005;14(5):315-320. doi:10.1136/tc.2005.011932.

2. Pirie K, Peto R, Reeves GK, Green J, Beral V. The 21st century hazards of smoking and benefits of stopping: a prospective study of one million women in the UK. Lancet. 2013;381(9861):133-141. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61720-6.

3. Doll R, Peto R, Boreham J, Sutherland I. Mortality in relation to smoking: 50 years' observations on male British doctors. BMJ. 2004;328(7455):1519. doi:10.1136/bmj.38142.554479.AE.

4. Doll R, Peto R, Boreham J, Sutherland I. Mortality from cancer in relation to smoking: 50 years observations on British doctors. Br J Cancer. 2005;92(3):426-429. doi:10.1038/sj.bjc.6602359

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We would like your feedback, please fill in our survey Read the key facts about smoking and cancer risk, and find the supporting evidence from academic research and scientific studies to see why we say what we do. Experts agree that tobacco is the single biggest avoidable cause of cancer in the world.

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The people that surround a smoker are called Pasive Smokers, which means that they inhale the smoke exhaled by the smoker. This is a real threat that needs to be studied because it can affect the people that has taken the responsability to not smoke. Also, it affects the environment, like the plants arround the smoker or the animals.

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The worst case scenario eclipses all the reasons given in this Poster. The other reasons to afirm that smoking is a negative action to the human may be denied by big groups of people, asuring that there ae other causes which creates the malfunction of the aveoli in our lungs, although many studies (shown in the links above) deny this theory. Well the worst case un lung cancer. It is a horrible, painfull and nearly undetectable (and very hard to treat with). This type of cancer develops a tumor in the lungs of the host, that develops and spreads over the body.

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The chemicals inhaled by the humans when smoking are very dangerous. For example, nicotine is a chemical that has the only purpose to create receptors in your barin in order to create an addiction. By doing this, it makes the production of cemicals in your body bigger and expands the dependency for the substance, leading in a reduction of the funcionality of the aveoli in our lungs.