What causes lung cancer?
Risk factors
-Anything that increases your chance of getting a disease is called a risk factor.
-Having a risk factor does not mean that you will get cancer; not having risk factors doesn’t mean that you will not get cancer.
Risk factors for lung cancer include the following:
-Smoking cigarettes, beedis, pipes, or cigars, now or in the past.
-Being exposed to second-hand smoke.
-Being treated with radiation therapy to the breast or chest.
-exposed to asbestos, radon, chromium, nickel, arsenic, soot, or tar.
-Living where there is air pollution.
When smoking is combined with other risk factors, the risk of lung cancer is increased.
-Smoking is the biggest risk factor for lung cancer
-A smoker's risk of developing lung cancer is 10 to 30 times greater than that of a nonsmoker.
-All forms of tobacco and smoking, including pipes, cigars, and chewing tobacco, are major risk
-factors for cancers of the mouth, throat and lungs.
-The risk of lung cancer increases with the number of cigarettes (or beedis or pipes) smoked and the number of years of smoking.
-The risk of cancer remains high for several years after quitting smoking but is lower than a smoker's risk within 5 to 10 years after quitting.
-A former smoker's risk of lung cancer is never as low as a nonsmoker's risk
How tobacco smoke causes cancer?u000b
DNA is the cell’s “instruction manual.” It controls a cell’s normal growth and function.
How tobacco smoke causes cancer?
-When DNA is damaged, a cell can begin growing out of control and create a cancer tumor.
-This happens because poisons in tobacco smoke can destroy or change the cell’s instructions.
-The tobacco smoke might damage the DNA in a way that leads to cancer.
-Normally, our immune system helps us to protect from cancer. It sends out tumor fighters to attack and kill cancer cells. However, new research shows that the poisons in cigarette smoke weaken the tumor fighters. When this happens, cells keep growing without being stopped. For this reason, smoking can cause cancer and then block the body from fighting it.
-Breathing tobacco smoke when person already have cancer is especially dangerous. New research shows that tobacco smoke helps tumors grow. It can undo the benefits of chemotherapy (type of cancer treatment).
Tobacco smoke contains a deadly mix of more than 7,000 chemicals. Hundreds are toxic and about 70 can cause cancer
Between 80% and 90% of all people with lung cancer are current or former smokers
Being exposed to second-hand smoke
-When non-smokers are exposed to secondhand smoke it is called involuntary smoking or passive smoking.
-Non-smokers who breathe in secondhand smoke take in nicotine and other toxic chemicals just like smokers do.
-The more secondhand smoke you are exposed to, the higher the level of these harmful chemicals in your body.
Secondhand smoke is a mixture of 2 forms of smoke that come from burning tobacco:
-Side stream smoke – the smoke that comes from the end of a lighted cigarette
-Mainstream smoke – the smoke that is exhaled by a smoker
Tobacco kills
“Approximately 1 person dies every 6 seconds due to tobacco and this accounts for 1 in 10 adult deaths”
“Tobacco use is the 2nd cause of death globally”
According to World Health Organization (WHO),
-Tobacco kills nearly 60, 00,000 people a year of whom more than 50, 00,000 are users and ex users and more than 6, 00,000 are non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke.
-Up to half of current users will eventually die of a tobacco-related disease
According WHO fact sheet,
Exposure to radiation therapy
Being treated with radiation therapy to the breast or chest may increases the risk of lung cancer
-The risk of developing lung cancer increases with age.
-Lung cancer can occur in young people, although it is unusual in people younger than 40 years old.
-After age 40, the risk for developing lung cancer slowly increases every year.
-Some people have a genetic risk or predisposition for lung cancer. Anyone with a first-degree relative (parent, brother, sister) with lung cancer has a higher risk of developing lung cancer themselves
Age and genetic risk factors
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