Smokeless Tobacco Products Cause Cancer
February 23, 2010
Natural News
By S. L. Baker
A recent study published in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology is urging tobacco manufacturers to reformulate a smokeless tobacco product called moist snuff. Researchers from Minnesota have found that the product contains high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which are highly toxic, cancer-causing substances.
Used in between the lip and gum, moist snuff has grown in popularity over the years due to increased awareness about the dangers of smoking cigarettes. Commonly thought to be a safer alternative to cigarettes, moist snuff is turning out to have its own slew of dangers. The PAHs found in moist snuff can lead to various cancers including oral, pancreatic, and esophageal. Precancerous oral lesions are typically the first symptoms to appear.
Twenty-three moist snuff products, including samples from the most popular brands, were examined by Irina Stepanov and her team from the University of Minnesota. As many as 28 different PAHs were discovered in the samples, nine of which are known carcinogens. These included naphthalene and chrysene.
Prior to this recent study, trace amounts of only one PAH had ever been found in a smokeless tobacco product. For this reason, the smokeless tobacco products have been marketed as a safer alternative for tobacco users concerned about the toxic effects of cigarettes.
Study researchers hope that the tobacco industry will take action to eliminate these harmful substances from their products. Since many people falsely assume that smokeless tobacco products are safe alternatives to cigarettes, experts insist that findings should be taken seriously by product manufacturers.
Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
The problem with becoming addicted to nicotine is that you always need another hit in some form, and as this report indicates, many people have switched to “smokeless” tobacco products to avoid the carcinogens found in cigarette smoke. But in doing so, they’ve subjected themselves a different profile of carcinogens found in snuff products.
The tobacco industry, of course, has always tried to bamboozle consumers by claiming their products are safe. Cigarettes, remember, were promoted by doctors who said they boost memory and improve your teeth! Big Tobacco has a long history of taking dangerous products and marketing them as safe or even healthy.
The bottom line for all consumers is to avoid processed tobacco products, as they are highly carcinogenic regardless of their form.
In my opinion, it’s probably safer to just smoke natural, unprocessed tobacco leaf than to chew processed tobacco snuff. There’s a considerable amount of evidence to suggest that the really harmful substances in tobacco are added (or altered) by the tobacco companies during manufacturing.
Click here for the full report.
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 2-17-10
Today, Kevin explains why he is in court today and the real reason he didn’t get fair coverage from the mainstream media. Plus, more predictions! You won’t want to miss this vital information!!
Foreclosures Reach 315,000 in January
Corporations Have No Interest In Your Safety
Updates to Mental Health Disorders Manual
Speaking of New Made-Up Disorders…
Anti-Depressant Drugs No More Effective Than Placebos
Household Cleaners May Cause Breast Cancer
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 12-22-09
Today, Kevin gives you more proof that reporters are just actors and cannot report the news without a teleprompter telling them what to say.
Cell Phones Allow Big Brother to Spy on You
The Revolving Door In Washington Turns Again
Big Pharma Kills Another Celebrity
Banks with Political Ties Got Biggest Bailouts
Maine Considers Cell Phone Cancer Warning
Monsanto Working on Genetically Modified Wheat
Plus, the author of The Ownership to All Life, Jon Rappoport, stopped by to blow the whistle on government corruption and media lies! Find out who really runs the world and get the inside scoop behind climate-gate and the health care reform scam. For more details visit his website, InSolution.info.
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
Obesity’s Rise May Hurt Smoking Gains In Lifespan
December 4, 2009
CNN
By Sarah Klein
Although fewer people are smoking — and therefore less likely to die from cigarette-related causes — the obesity epidemic may negate any gains in life span, according to a new study.
By 2020, the typical 18-year-old will gain 0.31 years due to the drop in smoking rates (above and beyond life span increases caused by other factors). But the increase in obesity rates during the same period will reduce life expectancy by 1.02 years, the researchers say.
During the next 10 years, in other words, we’ll lose 0.71 years of our life span, time that we would have gained if so many people weren’t overweight, according to the estimates published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
In addition, the increase in quality-adjusted life expectancy — a measure that takes into account levels of disability and other quality-of-life factors — will be reduced by 1.32 years. If all U.S. adults were nonsmokers of normal weight, life expectancy would increase by 3.76 years, or 5.16 quality-adjusted years, according to the study.
Health.com: Make healthy lunches your kids will actually eat
“Life expectancy is not going to decline,” says the study’s lead author, Susan T. Stewart, Ph.D., a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “But it could have risen by that much more if it weren’t for the increases in obesity.”
Stewart and her colleagues forecast life expectancy through the year 2020 using national survey data. Smoking, a major risk factor for lung disease, heart disease, and cancer, has decreased by 20 percent in the United States in the past 15 years, according to the study.
Over the same period, obesity has increased by 48 percent. Obesity contributes to a host of serious health problems, including heart disease, diabetes, joint problems, stroke, and some sleep disorders.
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By 2020, the report predicts, smoking will decrease by 21 percent, but 45 percent of the population will be obese.
Prior research has examined the effects of obesity on longevity, but this study is the first to examine the combined effects of obesity and smoking.
“No one ever has really done quite this linkage between smoking and obesity,” says S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Some people have suggested we’re on the verge of dramatic increases in life expectancy because of reductions in smoking, but these authors are saying, ‘Hold on a minute; the negative effect of obesity is much greater.’”
The extent of obesity’s impact on life span “might be a real eye-opener,” says Stewart.
Health.com: 8 reasons to make time for family dinner
Many people will question how a sedentary lifestyle can be as unhealthy as a deadly habit such as smoking, she says, adding that this is exactly why she and her colleagues believe this research is important. “We wanted to bring attention to the health of a population [that] is already not as healthy as it could be, and will continue and worsen,” she says.
The study does have limitations. The authors based their projections on a steady rate of change in obesity, for instance.
However, “childhood obesity has been rising dramatically, so the trends in the future are going to change by how long people have been obese,” says Olshansky, who did not participate in the current research, but projected similar obesity trends in a 2005 paper in the NEJM. “Younger generations are going to carry the obesity with them much longer,” leading to additional or more serious weight-related health risks, he says.
“If we don’t intervene, we are in trouble,” Olshansky adds.
Reversing the obesity trends reported in the study will likely require a concerted public health campaign similar to the one that has reduced smoking rates.
Click here for the full report
Lung Cancer Not The Only Cancer Linked to Smoke Exposure
December 4, 2009
U.S. News
By Amanda Gardner
Add colorectal cancer to the list of malignancies caused by smoking, with a new study strengthening the link between the two.
And other studies are providing more bad news for people who haven’t managed to quit: Two papers published in the December issue of Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a themed issue on tobacco, strengthen the case for the dangers of secondhand smoke for people exposed to fumes as children and as adults.
Inhaling those secondhand fumes may raise a woman’s odds for breast cancer or a child’s lifetime risk for lung malignancies, the studies found.
All of the findings, while grim, could be useful in the war against smoking, experts say.
“With the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], we’re hoping this will be a significant tool to controlling tobacco, although it could get bogged down in so many different ways,” said Dr. Peter Shields, deputy director of the Georgetown University Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and senior editor of the journal in which these papers appeared. “The FDA is going to have to make a lot of tough decisions about how to regulate tobacco, and the more science they have will help them.”
Is this latest round of revelations going to change current screening recommendations? Probably not, at least not yet, Shields added.
One study found that long-term smokers have a higher risk of developing colorectal cancer, a finding that factored into the recent decision by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to assert that there is “sufficient” evidence to link the two, up from its previous “limited” evidence.
“It took a long time to figure this out because the relationship [between smoking and colorectal cancer] is not as strong [as for some other cancers],” said Dr. Michael Thun, senior author of the study and vice president emeritus of epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society. “The question was, is the association we’re seeing really caused by smoking?”
The researchers managed to adjust for other colorectal cancer risk factors, such as not getting screened, obesity, physical activity and eating a lot of red or processed meats. The issue is tricky because people who smoke are already more likely to engage in these types of behavior.
“When they took all of those other things out, smoking was still a small, elevated risk,” said Dr. Michael John Hall, director of the gastrointestinal risk assessment program at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
“We already know that smoking is bad. That doesn’t change. A positive thing that comes out of this is that if you can stop smoking earlier, you eliminate your risk later on, but the more you smoke, the risk is higher.”
This large prospective study, which followed almost 200,000 people over 13 years, found that current smokers had a 27 percent increased risk of colorectal cancer and former smokers a 23 percent increased risk compared with people who had never smoked.
People who had smoked for at least half a century had the highest risk — 38 percent higher than never smokers — of developing colorectal cancer
The good news is that people who tossed their cigarettes before the age of 40 or who had not smoked for 31 or more years had no increased risk.
Two other studies focused on the risk of secondhand smoke, or passive smoking. In one, children exposed to secondhand smoke had a higher risk of developing lung cancer as adults, researchers from institutions including the U.S. National Cancer Institute found. In another, California researchers found that adult non-smoking women who had spent long periods of time in smoking environments upped their odds of developing postmenopausal breast cancer.
The breast cancer findings were seen mostly in postmenopausal women, with a 17 percent higher risk for those who had had low exposure, a 19 percent increased risk for those with medium exposure and a 26 percent increased risk for those who had high long-term exposure over their lifetime.
Adult exposure, such as spending time in smoking lounges where others were smoking, carried the most risk, with childhood exposure appearing negligible.
Click here for the full report
Doctors’ Deal With Coke Creates Uproar
November 9, 2009
Associated Press
By Lindsey Tanner
Advice about soft drinks and health from one of the nation’s largest doctors groups will soon be brought to you by Coke.
The American Academy of Family Physicians has prompted outcry and lost members over its new six-figure alliance with the Coca-Cola Co. The deal will fund educational materials about soft drinks for the academy’s consumer health and wellness Web site, http://www.FamilyDoctor.org.
Academy CEO Dr. Douglas Henley said Wednesday that the deal won’t influence the group’s public health messages, and that the company will have no control over editorial content. He said the new online information will include research linking soft drinks with obesity and will focus on sugar-free alternatives.
But critics say the Coke deal will water down the advice.
“Coca-Cola, like other sodas, causes enormous suffering and premature death by increasing the risks of obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, gout, and cavities,” Harvard University nutrition expert Dr. Walter Willett said in an e-mail.
He said the academy “should be a loud critic of these products and practices, but by signing with Coke their voice has almost surely been muzzled.”
Dr. Henry Blackburn, a University of Minnesota public health specialist, said the deal “will inevitably have a chilling effect on the focus of their message in regards to sweet drinks.”
Coca-Cola spokeswoman Diana Garza Ciarlante said that kind of criticism “misses the point of the partnership which is to provide education based on sound science.”
Dr. William Walker, public health officer for Contra Costa County near San Francisco, likened the alliance with ads decades ago in which physicians said mild cigarettes are safe,
Walker has been a member of the academy for 25 years but quit last week. He said 20 other doctors who work with his local medical practice also quit because of the Coke deal.
In an announcement last month, the academy, based in suburban Kansas City, Kan., said the new Coca-Cola-funded educational material will be posted online in January.
The idea is “to develop educational materials to help consumers make informed decisions so they can include the products they love in a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle,” the academy’s president-elect, Dr. Lori Heim, said at the time.
The American Academy of Pediatrics received similar criticism seven years ago when it allowed an infant formula maker’s logo to appear on copies of that group’s breast-feeding guide.
And the American Medical Association faced harsh reaction more than a decade ago with a plan to endorse Sunbeam appliances without testing them. Criticism forced the AMA to abandon that deal.
The Coke deal is not the only corporate alliance for the family physicians group. In 2005 it received funding from McDonalds for a fitness program. And its consumer Web site includes advertising for a variety of products, including deli meats and air freshener.
Henley said the Coke deal is worth six figures but he and a Coca-Cola spokeswoman declined to elaborate.
In a protest letter to Henley, 22 health specialists and activists questioned the safety of artificial sweeteners and urged the academy to abandon the deal and speak out against sugary drinks “in the strongest language.”
Henley said the academy regrets the resignations and hopes other members will not “rush to judgment” before seeing the new content.
Coca-Cola is among several corporate contributors to the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, a separate philanthropic group. These contributors include many drug companies, McDonalds, PepsiCo and a beef industry group. Henley said the academy is in talks with other foundation contributors to fund other materials for the group, but he declined to say which ones.
Click here for the full report.
Chinese Citizens Ordered to Smoke More Cigarettes to Boost Economy
September 16, 2009
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
The government of Gong’an County, in China’s Hubei province, sparked global controversy when it imposed a “cigarette quota” on public employees, in an effort to boost local revenue during the economic downturn.
Chinese law allows county governments to levy taxes on sales of cigarettes only if they are produced within the province. Gong’an County typically raises the least cigarette tax revenue of any county in the region, however, in part because neighboring Hunan province makes some of the highest quality cigarettes in China.
In an effort to raise revenue, the county passed a law ordering public employees to smoke only Gong’an county cigarettes, and threatening to penalize them if they failed to meet a certain quota. County employees were ordered to smoke a total of 230,000 Hubei-brand cigarettes, for total spending of nearly 4 million yuan ($590,000). As part of the new rule, a “special task force” was created and charged with enforcement.
The order drew global media attention when a local newspaper reported that a middle school teacher was to be disciplined for smoking the wrong brand of cigarettes. The teacher reported that county officials entered the school unannounced one afternoon and began sorting through the cigarette butts in the staff room.
When three “non-compliant” cigarette butts were found, the county threatened a fine. After negotiation with the school, a public reprimand was issued instead.
When the story broke, local and global press immediately criticized the rule for wasting public money and encouraging unhealthy practices.
In recent years, the central Chinese government has launched major anti-smoking initiatives. China is home to 350 million smokers, 1 million of whom die from tobacco-related causes each year.
Faced with mounting criticism, Gong’an authorities temporarily suspended the rule, saying that it violated rules about issuing notices.
“The matter is under review,” the county said in a statement.
No health concerns were cited as a reason for the reversal, but officials did say that they had no intention of encouraging non-smokers to begin smoking.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
U.S. Senator Promises Look Into Cellphone-Cancer Link
September 14, 2009
Reuters
by Maggie Fox
Iowa senator Tom Harkin, newly empowered to investigate health matters as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, promised on Monday to probe deeply into any potential links between cellphone use and cancer.
Harkin, who took over the committee earlier this month after the death of Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, said he was concerned no one has been able to prove cellphones do not cause cancer.
“I’m reminded of this nation’s experience with cigarettes. Decades passed between the first warnings about smoking tobacco and the final definitive conclusion that cigarettes cause lung cancer,” Harkin said.
Cell phones, used by an estimated 275 million people in the United States and 4 billion worldwide, use radio waves. Years of research have failed to establish any clear link between their use and several kinds of cancer, including brain tumors.
Recent worries have been raised by the Environmental Working Group, an activist group, and epidemiologist Devra Lee Davis of the University of Pittsburgh, who has written a book alleging the government has overlooked many potential sources of cancer.
Harkin called a hearing of the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education to look into the questions on Monday. “I will pursue this beyond this panel, with NIH (the National Institutes of Health),” Harkin said after the hearing.
He noted the appropriations committee did not have jurisdiction over the Food and Drug Administration or the Federal Communications Commission, but said the Health committee he now chairs does.
A staffer said the senator became concerned by a report from the Environmental Working Group showing that radio wave emissions vary from one cellphone brand and model to another; as well as some reports suggesting there might be a link.
PROVING A NEGATIVE
Linda Erdreich of science and engineering firm Exponent in New York said 50 years worth of evidence had failed to show that cellular phones can cause cancer.
“This part of the spectrum is known as non-ionizing radiation,” she told the hearing, explaining that this means radio waves cannot damage the DNA in cells.
But Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter pressed her on this, asking her repeatedly whether science had conclusively proved there was no connection. “Your statement that it is hard to prove a negative is right on,” Erdreich replied.
“What comes through to me is that we just don’t know what the answer is,” said Specter, a cancer survivor who said he avoids white flour and sugar in case it might feed tumors.
Click here for the full report from Reuters
