I saw a factoid yesterday saying that 800,000 people are killed by passive tobacco smoking.
Yeah, no.
8,000 I’d be prepared to believe, or 800. But not 800,000.
The entire world deaths from lung cancer are only 1.6 million a year.

I had a quick look at the early (mostly pre-1960) medical literature.

In a recent paper, circa 2020, there was a claim that most deaths globally from lung cancer are caused by passive tobacco smoking, which cited author J. Ferlay. I haven’t found the original yet, which may say something quite different.

In the early medical literature I found:

• Tobacco smoke is an effective fumigant. It kills airborne bacteria. So does smoke from incense and smoke from burning hay. This was known as early as the 1690s, when tobacco smoking was made compulsory for students of Eton college to slow down transmission of the plague.

• Tobacco smoke does not cause skin cancer. This was known in the year 1909.

• Giving workers a smoking break at work increases productivity.

• Emphysema is caused by heavy tobacco smoking. It goes away when smoking is stopped, and returns when smoking is resumed.

Unlike cigarettes, marijuana does not come with a tar filter. In order to try to separate out smoking of tobacco from smoking of marijuana, I looked at lung cancer statistics in Jamaica. I’ve visited Jamaica for a month and in that time I saw people smoking marijuana but none smoking tobacco. Of the 250 per million men in Kingston there dying from lung cancer, at least 220 were due to environmental effects rather than genetics.

Any lung damage can lead to lung cancer. Though I don’t see how lung damage can lead to cancer 10 or 20 years later because the entire set of cells lining of the lung is renewed in under seven years.

Possible causes of such lung damage include:

• Smoking tobacco, with or without a tar filter.
• Incense, particularly in places like India.
• Inhaling spices, particularly in places like India.
• Onions.
• Passive smoking of tobacco.
• Smoking of marijuana.
• Soot from diesel trucks.
• Carcinogens in petrol – benzene and toluene.
• Cleaning products chlorine and ammonia.
• Industrial exposure to smoke, other particulates such as cement dust, or airborne acids.
• Pollen.
• Mold.
• Vegetation fibres and chemicals such as terpenes given off by plants.
• Perfume, nail polish remover.
• Clothing and soft furnishing fibres.
• Pet hair.
• Dust containing webs of spiders and mites.
• Bushfires, wood burning heaters.

I saw a report once saying that wood burning heaters in Tasmania were causing lung cancer.

How to separate out the statistics?

How many deaths do you think are caused by passive smoking of tobacco?

“the entire set of cells lining of the lung is renewed in under seven years.”

Are you saying that scar tissue can grow new cells?

How many deaths do you think are caused by passive smoking of tobacco?

..

Including secondary and tertiary passive smoking?

technically all smokers are also passive smokers, recycling their own exhaled smoke as they do

and that’s ignoring the non-complete displacement of gas in the lungs and airways with each breath, between puffs

the repetitious act – pattern – of exhaling and inhaling, unless outside in considerable breeze, generally results in passive smoking in addition direct smoking

inevitably being a smoker, or while smoking, the sensitivity of the smoker to passive smoking may be diminished

transition said:

technically all smokers are also passive smokers, recycling their own exhaled smoke as they do

and that’s ignoring the non-complete displacement of gas in the lungs and airways with each breath, between puffs

the repetitious act – pattern – of exhaling and inhaling, unless outside in considerable breeze, generally results in passive smoking in addition direct smoking

inevitably being a smoker, or while smoking, the sensitivity of the smoker to passive smoking may be diminished

In an around about way, if you like.

In 2004, the most recent year with comprehensive data, passive smoking is estimated to have caused an estimated 379,000 deaths from ischaemic heart disease, 165,000 from lower respiratory infections, 36,900 from asthma and 21,400 from lung cancer – around 1% of deaths worldwide

—-https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/nov/26/passive-smoking-deaths-who-report

The Bingbot tells me that:

“Worldwide, tobacco use caused more than 8.67 million deaths in 2019”

https://tobaccoatlas.org/challenges/deaths/

dv said:

In 2004, the most recent year with comprehensive data, passive smoking is estimated to have caused an estimated 379,000 deaths from ischaemic heart disease, 165,000 from lower respiratory infections, 36,900 from asthma and 21,400 from lung cancer – around 1% of deaths worldwide

—-https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/nov/26/passive-smoking-deaths-who-report

No comprehensive data since 2004?!

I passively smoke the neighbours’ wood heater fumes which are presumably even worse than tobacco smoke.

Nothing I can do about it except wear a respirator, and I still don’t have one.

Bubblecar said:

I passively smoke the neighbours’ wood heater fumes which are presumably even worse than tobacco smoke.

Nothing I can do about it except wear a respirator, and I still don’t have one.

OCDC said:

Bubblecar said:

I passively smoke the neighbours’ wood heater fumes which are presumably even worse than tobacco smoke.

Nothing I can do about it except wear a respirator, and I still don’t have one.

chuckle

OCDC said:

Bubblecar said:

I passively smoke the neighbours’ wood heater fumes which are presumably even worse than tobacco smoke.

Nothing I can do about it except wear a respirator, and I still don’t have one.

Don’t know how effective those antique ones would be.

Thanks all, will follow those up.

I’m starting to look up
Lung cancer mortality in the wake of the changing smoking epidemic: a descriptive study of the global burden in 2020 and 2040

That “2040” date seems a bit premature. And it doesn’t really say much.

“We present figures based on the estimated deaths in 2020, as well as two summary measures using direct standardisation, namely the age-standardised mortality rate per 100 000 person-years based on the 1966 Segi-Doll World standard population”

Thanks I’d wondered what Segi-Doll was.

There are fewer lung cancer deaths in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa (other than S. Africa).

The wide variation between countries tells me that differences are largely environmental, very little of this difference can be ascribed to genetics.

From Our World in Data

According to OWID, Hungary has the highest death rate from lung cancer, followed by Armenia, Croatia, Serbia, Greece, Latvia, Poland, Turkey.

OK, that’s not passive smoking.

From wikipedia. This is specifically “cigarettes”. Although cigarettes form the majority of tobacco smoked, that doesn’t necessarily equate to lung cancer deaths because cigarettes have tar filters.

As a map.

My understanding is that cigarette smoke is a carcinogen because something chemically in cigarettes blocks the immune system’s ability to recognize mutations in cells that become cancerous.

Therefore, it seems more than likely that passive smoking plays a role in harm to others that aren’t themselves smoking cigarettes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9498279/

2. Tobacco Smoking and the Immune System
A single cigarette contains over 7000 hazardous chemicals and 60 carcinogens, including polycyclic hydrocarbon carcinogens such as benzopyrene (BAP) and nicotine-derived nitrosoaminoketone . Polycyclic hydrocarbons are responsible for the formation of bulky DNA adducts and their removal by nucleotide excision repair may result in DNA damage, tumorigenesis, and enhanced mutation burden . This creates a distinct mutational signature in smokers (smoking signature, SS) characteristic of C>A transversions . Tobacco smoking is also associated with the upregulation of PD-L1, which impairs the inflammatory response, allowing tumor cells to evade the immune system (Figure 1).

Bubblecar said:

I passively smoke the neighbours’ wood heater fumes which are presumably even worse than tobacco smoke.

Nothing I can do about it except wear a respirator, and I still don’t have one.

Larger particles I imagine

Thanks all, will follow up.

I’ve been peeling back the medical literature a decade at a time, and have also read through four university textbooks on lung cancer.

The first thing about lung cancer and smoking is that it has been damnably difficult to prove in the laboratory. If you give say a mouse an excessive amount of cigarette smoke then it never develops lung cancer. And the reason for that is that you have to be smoking for an absolute minimum of 20 years daily before you develop a lung cancer that is caused by smoking. 40 to 60 years of daily smoking is more common. Most lab animals simply don’t live long enough.

There are four separate types of passive smoking that I want to separate out.
1. Spouse is a heavy smoker
2. Mother is a heavy smoker
3. Father is a heavy smoker
4. Workmates are heavy smokers

Before that, let’s look at the smokers themselves and the risk of lung cancer for them. There are five main types of lung cancer but I want to concentrate on two: squamous cell carcinoma and adrenocarcinoma. Among non-smokers, adrenocarcinoma is the main form of lung cancer. It can develop at any age. There is currently an epidemic of adrenocarcinoma and nobody knows why, it is not because of tobacco smoking. Tobacco smoking can cause adrenocarcinoma, but more than half of all adrenocarcinomas are not caused by tobacco smoke.

By contrast, squamous cell carcinoma is caused by tobacco smoking. An estimated 98.7% of squamous cell carcinomas are the direct result of tobacco smoking, 1.3% not from tobacco smoking. In some countries that 1.3% can be as high as 5.4%, but it is always a small percentage. Squamous cell carcinomas are on the decrease everywhere. In just about every country.

The point I want to make here is that you have to inhale an awfully large amount of tobacco smoke over a long period of time for it to cause lung cancer. By how much?

1 to 14 cigarettes a day (unspecified within that range) for all your life makes you 6.9 times more likely to develop lung cancer than a non-smoker.
15 to 24 cigarettes per day for all your life makes you 10.9 times as likely to develop lung cancer than a non-smoker.
25 or more cigarettes per day for all your life makes you 17.8 times as likely to develop lung cancer than a non-smoker.
Being a former heavy smoker makes you 5.9 times as likely to develop lung cancer than a non-smoker.

This data is from the 1990s and is age-standardised. Meaning that these lung cancer cases of people of ages 60 to 90 includes cigarettes from before the advent of tar filters.

And that brings us back to passive smoking.

1. Spouse is a heavy smoker.
I’m not sure of the definition of “heavy smoker” here, it may mean 15 or more cigarettes a day, it may mean 25 or more cigarettes a day, it does not mean less than 15 cigarettes a day. A non-smoking spouse of a heavy smoker is more likely to have lung cancer. These are called passive smokers. A male passive smoker is 1.3 times more likely to develop lung cancer than a male non-smoker. A female passive smoker is 1.2 times more likely to develop lung cancer than a female non-smoker. Possibly because the man is more likely to smoke away from home. Notice that these are much smaller risks than the smoking spouse (at 10.9 to 17.8 times more likely).

2. Mother is a heavy smoker.
If the child is a non-smoker then there is no extra risk from passive smoking, it’s just the same risk as if the mother wasn’t a heavy smoker. That’s because only 20 years of passive smoking has no effect on lung cancer incidence. But if the child is a smoker, then the risk of lung cancer is higher than for that number of daily cigarettes alone.

3. Father is a heavy smoker.
No extra passive smoking risk.

4. Heavy smoking inside in the workplace.
An indoor workplace heavy with smoke increases the risk to a non-smoker working there for life by a factor of 1.15.

Can I put some numbers to this?

mollwollfumble said:

Thanks all, will follow up.

I’ve been peeling back the medical literature a decade at a time, and have also read through four university textbooks on lung cancer.

The first thing about lung cancer and smoking is that it has been damnably difficult to prove in the laboratory. If you give say a mouse an excessive amount of cigarette smoke then it never develops lung cancer. And the reason for that is that you have to be smoking for an absolute minimum of 20 years daily before you develop a lung cancer that is caused by smoking. 40 to 60 years of daily smoking is more common. Most lab animals simply don’t live long enough.

There are four separate types of passive smoking that I want to separate out.
1. Spouse is a heavy smoker
2. Mother is a heavy smoker
3. Father is a heavy smoker
4. Workmates are heavy smokers

Before that, let’s look at the smokers themselves and the risk of lung cancer for them. There are five main types of lung cancer but I want to concentrate on two: squamous cell carcinoma and adrenocarcinoma. Among non-smokers, adrenocarcinoma is the main form of lung cancer. It can develop at any age. There is currently an epidemic of adrenocarcinoma and nobody knows why, it is not because of tobacco smoking. Tobacco smoking can cause adrenocarcinoma, but more than half of all adrenocarcinomas are not caused by tobacco smoke.

By contrast, squamous cell carcinoma is caused by tobacco smoking. An estimated 98.7% of squamous cell carcinomas are the direct result of tobacco smoking, 1.3% not from tobacco smoking. In some countries that 1.3% can be as high as 5.4%, but it is always a small percentage. Squamous cell carcinomas are on the decrease everywhere. In just about every country.

The point I want to make here is that you have to inhale an awfully large amount of tobacco smoke over a long period of time for it to cause lung cancer. By how much?

1 to 14 cigarettes a day (unspecified within that range) for all your life makes you 6.9 times more likely to develop lung cancer than a non-smoker.
15 to 24 cigarettes per day for all your life makes you 10.9 times as likely to develop lung cancer than a non-smoker.
25 or more cigarettes per day for all your life makes you 17.8 times as likely to develop lung cancer than a non-smoker.
Being a former heavy smoker makes you 5.9 times as likely to develop lung cancer than a non-smoker.

This data is from the 1990s and is age-standardised. Meaning that these lung cancer cases of people of ages 60 to 90 includes cigarettes from before the advent of tar filters.

And that brings us back to passive smoking.

1. Spouse is a heavy smoker.
I’m not sure of the definition of “heavy smoker” here, it may mean 15 or more cigarettes a day, it may mean 25 or more cigarettes a day, it does not mean less than 15 cigarettes a day. A non-smoking spouse of a heavy smoker is more likely to have lung cancer. These are called passive smokers. A male passive smoker is 1.3 times more likely to develop lung cancer than a male non-smoker. A female passive smoker is 1.2 times more likely to develop lung cancer than a female non-smoker. Possibly because the man is more likely to smoke away from home. Notice that these are much smaller risks than the smoking spouse (at 10.9 to 17.8 times more likely).

2. Mother is a heavy smoker.
If the child is a non-smoker then there is no extra risk from passive smoking, it’s just the same risk as if the mother wasn’t a heavy smoker. That’s because only 20 years of passive smoking has no effect on lung cancer incidence. But if the child is a smoker, then the risk of lung cancer is higher than for that number of daily cigarettes alone.

3. Father is a heavy smoker.
No extra passive smoking risk.

4. Heavy smoking inside in the workplace.
An indoor workplace heavy with smoke increases the risk to a non-smoker working there for life by a factor of 1.15.

Can I put some numbers to this?

IIRC a landmark case for an employee of the pubs and clubs sector, was successful in proving passive smoking in their workplace caused their lung cancer as they never personally smoked. I believe the roll-on effect was the banning of smoking in pubs and clubs except in designated areas, which is still the situation today in Australia at least.

Cigarettes killed my father, step father and grandfather

wookiemeister said:

Cigarettes killed my father, step father and grandfather

And if it weren’t for them cigarettes they’d still be alive today.

wookiemeister said:

Cigarettes killed my father, step father and grandfather

So, do you smoke?

Peak Warming Man said:

wookiemeister said:

Cigarettes killed my father, step father and grandfather

And if it weren’t for them cigarettes they’d still be alive today.

All of them hale and hearty.