Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 21, 1990 TAG: 9005210004
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
"Passive smoking causes heart disease, and the number of deaths due to heart disease is 10 times the number due to cancer," said Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco.
In remarks presented Sunday at the World Conference on Lung Health in Boston, Glantz said research is beginning to show exactly how cigarette smoke alters the heart, blood and arteries to increase the heart disease risk. Glantz presented a study in which he reviewed others' research on the subject.
In his 1986 annual report on smoking and health, the U.S. surgeon general concluded that passive smoking causes lung cancer in non-smokers. The evidence was insufficient then to link passive smoking with heart disease, the report said.
Newer studies have changed that, Glantz said Friday.
"The evidence that passive smoking causes heart disease is stronger today than the evidence was in 1986 that passive smoking caused lung cancer," Glantz said.
Glantz's study follows one week after the Environmental Protection Agency said it will declare environmental tobacco smoke a known carcinogen.
The EPA concluded that passive smoking causes 3,000 cases of lung cancer per year. Glantz said passive smoking also causes 32,000 deaths from heart disease per year.
"The heart disease deaths combined with the cancer deaths make passive smoking the third-leading cause of preventable death, behind smoking and alcohol," he said.
The Tobacco Institute, which represents cigarette makers, said the surgeon general had failed to find proof that passive smoking causes heart disease.
Brennan Dawson, a spokeswoman for the institute, said Friday that there have been only three studies since the surgeon general's 1986 report, "and they continue to support the conclusions" that there is no proven link between passive smoking and heart disease.
Glantz disagreed. "There are now 11 studies of the effects of passive smoking on heart disease deaths" in non-smokers, he said. "All but one the tobacco industry funded show an increased risk." The studies show increased risks of between 20 percent and 30 percent.
Furthermore, he said, "there's evidence from several areas that passive smoking reduces the ability of the heart to obtain and profit from oxygen."
Carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke binds with hemoglobin in the blood, reducing its capacity to carry oxygen, Glantz said.
by CNB