Ciggyfree Blog

Sounding a warning over the dangers of passive smoking, a large-scale government study has found that women whose husbands smoke at home have twice the risk of developing a specific type of lung cancer compared with those married to nonsmokers.

The research team of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry that carried out the study, whose results were announced Wednesday, also said that about 40 percent of nonsmoking female cancer patients might not have contracted the disease if they had not been exposed to cigarette smoke at home.

The lung cancer in question, adenocarcinoma, is one type of non-small cell lung cancer that often develops along the outer edges of the lung and under the membranes lining the bronchi. It is the most frequently found type of lung cancer, cases of which have been increasing in the country. Those who have developed the cancer account for 70 percent of female lung cancer patients and 40 percent of male lung cancer patients.

The study was conducted on about 28,000 nonsmoking women who were aged between 40 and 69 over about 13 years from the early 1990s.