From: [v--d--t] at [twain.ucs.umass.edu] (Sol Lightman)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: Tobacco study
Date: 18 Nov 1993 01:39:16 GMT
A ?new? candidate for the origin of tobacco induced carcinoma... comments
anyone? Is this just one of those carcinogenic-at-fifty-three-times-the-
normal-human-dose things or is there reason to treat this seriously?
Brian
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(original article in the Clarinet groups)
BOSTON (UPI) -- Reinforcing the view that second-hand smoke causes
cancer, scientists said Wednesday that levels of a potent lung
carcinogen rose sharply in non-smokers exposed to cigarette smoke.
``We feel the presence of this carcinogen, which can come only from
tobacco products, supports the hypothesis that non-smokers are at risk
from environmental tobacco smoke,'' said Stephen Hecht of the American
Health Foundation in Valhalla, N.Y., who led the study.
Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a report
concluding that passive smoking is linked to lung cancer in adults, and
that environmental tobacco smoke should be classified as a human
carcinogen.
For 1 1/2 hours on two days, six months apart, Hecht and co-
researchers exposed five men to cigarette smoke in amounts typically
found in a smoky bar.
As a result, concentrations in the men's urine of a breakdown product
of a cancer-causing substance called NNK temporarily rose by an average
of four-fold, investigators reported in The New England Journal of
Medicine.
``In rats and mice, NNK is a very powerful lung carcinogen that
induces adenocarcinoma of the lung, which is the type of tumor seen in
many cases of lung cancer,'' said Hecht.
He said the study is the first to show that a substance specifically
linked to lung cancer, and derived only from tobacco products, is taken
in and metabolized in the bodies of non-smokers who inhale second-hand
smoke.
[...]
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