Lung Cancer Toll Climbs Sharply, 44% for Women

The lung cancer death rate increased 15% in the last decade with a nearly 50% mortality increase among women, the government said Thursday, even though millions of Americans have quit smoking.

The federal Centers for Disease Control said 126,000 Americans died of cancer of the lungs, trachea and bronchus in 1988. The 15% overall death rate increase for lung cancer--7% among males and 44% among females--occurred between 1979 and 1988.

Lung cancer death rates were highest in Alaska, 70.5 per 100,000 population, and lowest in Utah, 24.3 per 100,000, the report said.

Robert Hahn, a public health specialist at CDC, said lung cancer mortality rates were also high in Southern and lower-Midwestern states. He attributed the rates there to a greater number of smokers.

The CDC attributed the big increase in the lung cancer death rate among women to a slower decline since 1965 in the percentage of women who smoke.

Smoking prevalence among men dropped from 50.2% in 1965 to 31.7% in 1987 and the lung cancer death rate among men began to level off in the late 1970s.

By contrast, the CDC said, there was only a 5% decline from 31.9% to 26.8% in smoking prevalence among women in that period and the age-adjusted lung cancer death rate for women has continued to climb.