Passive smoking: Paper does not diminish conclusion of previous  reports

doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7413.501-b

BMJ 2003;327:501-502 (30 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7413.501-b

Letter

Passive smoking

Paper does not diminish conclusion of previous reports

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Editor—I am writing on behalf of members of the 2002 workinggroup on involuntary smoking and cancer for the InternationalAgency for Research on Cancer (IARC).¹ We concluded that environmentaltobacco smoke causes lung cancer among never smokers. The paperby Enstrom and Kabat² does not diminish this conclusion orthose of previous reports.^3–5

Enstrom and Kabat's paper was based on one of the 25 US states(California) in the American Cancer Society's prevention study.The relative risk of lung cancer in never smoking women marriedto ever smokers was reported as 0.99 (95% confidence interval0.72 to 1.37), based on only 177 cases, whereas the IARC meta-analysis,based on 46 studies and 6257 cases, yielded an estimate of 1.24 (95% confidence interval 1.14 to 1.34).¹ The estimate of Enstrom and Kabat is consistent with both an increased riskof lung cancer (the confidence interval includes the IARC estimateof . . . [Full text of this article]

Allan Hackshaw, deputy director

Cancer Research UK and UCL Cancer Trials Centre, University College London, London NW1 2ND allan.hackshaw@ctc.ucl.ac.uk

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