U.S. Lung Cancer Rates Are Soaring, Study Finds

Lung cancer rates have climbed so sharply in the United States that the death rate from the disease among nonsmoking women is now higher than the total lung cancer death rate in women 30 years ago, a study shows.

“Cancer is increasing in industrial countries above and beyond that due to cigarette smoking or aging alone,” said Devra Lee Davis, an author of the study and one of the editors of a collection of studies exploring the recent increases in cancer.

The increased rate of lung cancer among women who don’t smoke could reflect exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke as well as exposure to radon, asbestos and possibly air pollution, said Davis, a researcher at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

According to National Cancer Institute figures, the lung cancer death rate among all women in 1955 was 5.1 deaths per 100,000 women. Davis and her collaborators calculated that the death rate in female nonsmokers by 1985 was 6.1 per 100,000; the total reported lung cancer death rate that year for women was 26.4.

Sharp increases are also occurring in brain cancer, a blood cancer called multiple myeloma and the dangerous skin cancer called melanoma, Davis said. And the increases are occurring in many industrial countries, not just the United States.

Although the studies emphasize occupational and environmental exposure, smoking remains one of the single most important causes of cancer, Davis said.

Smoking kills an estimated 3 million people each year around the world, she said.

The new studies are collected in “Trends in Cancer Mortality in Industrial Countries,” which will be released by the New York Academy of Sciences this week.