Far North’s Cancer Rates Blamed on Tobacco
- Share via
ANCHORAGE — Cancer rates are skyrocketing in the Far North among Native Americans and Eskimos, or Inuit, and experts say the cause is simple--smoking.
Secondhand smoke presents major problems for children cooped up for long winters with smoking parents, and low birth weights are recorded for children born to smoking mothers.
An international conference of scientific experts held in May in Alaska said smoking had replaced tuberculosis as the greatest single health threat to Inuit and American Indians.
A nine-year study by the Danish Cancer Registry found that lung cancer rates among Inuit populations around the Far North were some of the highest in the world. And a University of Alberta study found that infants of smoking mothers in the Inuvik zone of Canada’s Northwest Territories weighed less on average than those born to nonsmoking mothers.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
John Orr was a renowned fire investigator who was also a prolific arsonist, and whose thinly veiled novel helped to convict him. In this episode we hear from the fire captain who first suspected him—and from Orr himself.
Madison McGhee is joined by legendary Dateline host Josh Mankiewicz and esteemed L.A. Times Reporter Richard Winton as the three of them dive into all-things Menendez Brothers, the good, the bad, and the still unknown.
NPR climate editor Sadie Babits talks about why the media has long overlooked the climate crisis, and how that’s starting to change.
