Smoking -- The Leading Cause of Preventable Death
Doctors recently urged President Obama to continue his efforts to stop smoking.
  08 March 2010


Photo: AP
Smokers near a train station in Beijing, China, last February. One-third of all smokers live in East Asia and the Pacific
Smoking kills an estimated five million people worldwide every year. It is the second leading cause of death, after cancer.
FAITH LAPIDUS:  This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English.  I’m Faith Lapidus. 
BOB DOUGHTY:  And I`m Bob Doughty.  This week, we talk about smoking – the leading cause of cancer worldwide.
(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS:  Barack Obama completed his first routine physical examination as President of the United States last week.  Doctors reported that Mister Obama is in excellent health.  They say all evidence suggests that he will remain so during his presidency.
The doctors gave the president suggestions so that he can stay healthy.  One is for him to continue with efforts to stop smoking.  Mister Obama has spoken publicly about those efforts in the past.  The new report shows his battle against smoking is continuing. 


AP
President Obama heads to his first physical exam in office on February 28th, 2010. Doctors have told the president to find a way to stop smoking
BOB DOUGHTY:  President Obama is not alone.  More than one billion people around the world are smokers.  Health experts have been warning about links between smoking and disease for years. 
Smoking kills an estimated five million people worldwide every year.  Experts say smoking is the leading cause of preventable death.  And, it is the second leading cause of death, after cancer. 
Smoking is also the leading cause of cancer.  Experts say forty percent of cancers could be prevented by avoiding health risks like smoking and tobacco use. 
Smoking also causes forty-two percent of cases of chronic respiratory disease, including asthma, bronchitis and emphysema.  And, it causes ten percent of cardiovascular diseases, like heart disease and stroke.
FAITH LAPIDUS:  The medical research community is continually reporting reasons why smokers should stop.  A recent study found that people who smoke are nearly two times as likely as non-smokers to develop Alzheimer’s disease.  Alzheimer’s weakens or destroys memory and reasoning. 
In the study, researchers examined forty-three published studies about the link between Alzheimer’s disease and smoking.  They found that smoking increased the risk of Alzheimer’s developing by one and seven-tenths percent.  The researchers work at the University of California in San Francisco.  Their findings were published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. 
In an earlier study, seven thousand people were observed for an average of seven years.  Each person was fifty-five years or older.  Those who smoked were fifty percent more likely to develop memory loss than those who never smoked, or who had quit. 
BOB DOUGHTY:  Other research has linked smoking to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.  ALS is a deadly disease affecting the motor nerves and the voluntary muscles.  Last year, a study in the medical journal Neurology found smoking to be an established risk factor in developing the disease.  Some of the evidence even suggested smoking may be directly responsible for ALS. 
Smoking also increases the risk of developing age-related macular degeneration.  AMD is the leading cause of blindness among adults fifty and older.  Research has shown AMD is two to three times more common among smokers than other people. 
FAITH LAPIDUS:  A recent study examined how smoking affects a person’s risk of AMD later in life.  Researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles studied nearly two thousand women. 
Four percent of the women were smokers.  Each woman had pictures of her retinas taken at age seventy-eight.  The researchers compared these retinal images with pictures taken five years later when the women were eighty-three.  They studied the pictures for signs of AMD and to see whether smoking influenced the women’s chances of developing the disease. 
The women who smoked had an eleven percent higher rate of AMD than the other women.  In women over eighty, those who smoked were five and a half times more likely to develop AMD than the women who did not smoke.  A report on the study was published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology. 
BOB DOUGHTY:  People who smoke are not only hurting themselves.  They also can harm non-smokers.  The World Health Organization estimates that secondhand smoke kills six hundred thousand people each year. 
The International Union Against Cancer says about seven hundred million children breathe smoke-filled air.  Expectant mothers who smoke are more likely to have babies with health problems and low birth weight.  Such babies may suffer health problems as they grow.
FAITH LAPIDUS:  Even after all the warnings, the WHO says one billion three hundred million people still smoke.  The number of smokers is expected to grow to one billion seven hundred million by twenty twenty-five.  Smoking rates have decreased in the United States and Europe.  But rates have risen in other areas.
WHO officials say eighty-four percent of all smokers live in developing countries.  Nations in the Western Pacific Ocean have the highest smoking rates.  One