Clearing the air over smoking

Despite what tobacco proponents say, smoking is injurious to health. Evidence of this first arose in the 1930s. Over subsequent decades epidemiologists used statistics and large-scale, long-term, case-control surveys to link an increase in lung cancer deaths to smoking. Scientists confirmed a relationship between smoking to lung cancer and other serious diseases, such as bronchitis, emphysema and coronary heart disease. Smoking became the chief cause of the epidemic rise of lung cancer in the 20th century. Fifty years ago the US Surgeon-General made it the official position of the Public Health Service, claiming evidence pointed to a causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer.

Now, for more than 15 years, scientists have been able to demonstrate a clear link between secondary smoking and diseases like cancer. It is for that reason many countries now ban smoking in public areas and why Dubai imposed a ban on smoking in public departments.