Air pollution or smoking: Which is the greater cancer risk?

Pollution

2 of 6

by Patrick Sills

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Let me begin by stating that if everything reported to cause cancer actually did, our average lifespans in the United States wouldn't be hovering near the 80-year mark. In fact, we'd be lucky to see 30. In my opinion, the dangers of smoking tobacco are greatly exaggerated and the dangers of so-called "secondhand smoke" are a complete fabrication created by those who envision a Utopian, smoke-free society. I believe that direct smoking can increase one's risk of developing lung, oral, or throat cancer, but that's it. All of the other research that has supposedly linked tobacco use to other forms of cancer is biased; fueled by funding from anti-tobacco groups. I don't hold a medical degree, but come on, folks! What would smoking have to do with breast cancer? Or pancreatic cancer? Colon cancer?

Here's something the Centers For Disease Control (USA) won't tell you: While it is true that 87% of lung cancers are found in smokers and ex-smokers, did you know that less than 10% of those who smoke will ever get the disease? Uncaring as it may sound; for every bitter tobacco foe who has a sob story about a loved one wasting away beneath a respirator in a hospital bed, you'll find 9 or 10 relatives of smokers with no such account. As for oral and/or larynx cancer, it is far less. I will confess something here: My father was diagnosed with throat cancer after a 46 year pipe-smoking habit, but he also liked his Kentucky Bourbon and Gin Gimlets. The doctors told us that alcohol consumption was an equal risk factor, and therefore they could never be certain which indulgence triggered the cellular changes that led to his tumor. It could have been one, the other, or both. This topic; however, is a debate on whether smoking or air pollution is the guiltier party.

The toxins we have been breathing since the onset of the Industrial Age some 120 years ago still hover relentlessly above our heads. The emissions from countless millions of automobiles have further added to the plethora of pollutants. A 20-gallon tankful of gasoline or diesel fuel will put more contaminants into the air than what a smoker could produce in a lifetime. While I still hold to the conviction that there are not nearly as many culprits as the media would have us believe causing cancer, it nevertheless stands to reason that the unnatural compounds tossed into our atmosphere on a daily basis far outweigh every puff a smoker could ingest; even over a period of decades.

Lung cancer is currently the most common form of this terrible disease. While it is not well-known, there is a theory among certain factions of hardcore smoking-rights activists.From 1947 until 1963, the U.S. government conducted many nuclear tests in remote parts of our deserts. Many weapons of mass destruction were detonated, and it is said that the radioactive fallout is still slowly making its way to the ground 45 years after such tests were banned. Coincidentally, in 1964, the year after the ban was implemented, the Surgeon General's Report linking smoking to lung cancer was released. Is it possible that our government created this report to cover up the real cause? As far as my personal take is on the subject, let's just say that the jury's still out. Yet I pose a question: Why are lung cancer rates now higher than ever while the smoking rate is less than half of that of 40 years ago?

While I will acknowledge that smoking isn't exactly the healthiest thing a person could choose to do, air pollution and genetic predisposition are by far the greater factors in determining cancer risk.

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