Comments - Latest Popular Stories, Instablogs Community by Gracieb

Jaiyant Cavale

Jaiyant Cavale — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Considering the huge population, the ease of smoking, and wide accessibility to cigarettes, the figure seems small.

Grace Calderon

Grace Calderon — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

There have been two studies that are a result of a long-term international collaboration between Oxford University, the Chinese Academies of Preventive Medicine and of Medical Sciences in Beijing and Cornell University in the US.

The first research interviewed the families of one million people who had died in 24 cities and 74 rural counties to establish if the dead person had smoked.

The second study is ongoing and is looking at quarter of a million men aged over 40.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/216998.stm

Grace Calderon

Grace Calderon — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In the West, smoking causes a high number of heart-related deaths, but in China, the majority of deaths are due to respiratory diseases, including tuberculosis.

Dr Alan Lopez of the World Health Organisation, told a news conference in London: ”In the West, cigarettes cause lots of heart attack deaths, while in China smoking causes unexpectedly large numbers of deaths from tuberculosis, emphysema, stomach cancer and liver cancer.

Nearly three-quarters of all Chinese men are smokers. Two-thirds of Chinese people think smoking does little or no harm.

Michael C

Michael C — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Grace!! Cool post, as usual...

Here’s a related and little-known story, even in England.

”The Great Smog” as it was called, happened in London over a week in 1952 and was caused by coal-smoke combined with propitious (no wind/high humidity/low temperatures etc) atmospheric conditions. All activity stopped for four or five days. For example, with visibility at one yard, driving was impossible, and even theatres shut down because people couldn’t see the screens!!!

Result - 12000 deaths, of which 4500 occured during the smog and the rest over a one-month period afterwards. Causes of death were generally respiration-related ilnesses. Frightening huh? This kind of thing happened several times in England over a 150-year period. (Incidentally, British policy on coal and clean air changed drastically afterwards).

I lived in England while coal was still around. Horrible. I now live in a ”nuclear” country (France), and although nuclear isn’t perfect, it has killed many fewer people than coal ever did and, until we find something better, I support it. People tend to forget this when criticising nuclear, particularly younger people who didn’t live the only viable alternative at the time....

Good day to you Grace!

Michael

Grace Calderon

Grace Calderon — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for another insightful tidbit, Michael. You do enrich materials here at IB with your info bytes.

You’re cool!

Jayashree

Jayashree — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Maybe that damn smoking ban should be enforced there instead.