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Marvin A. Schneiderman, PhD; Devra Lee Davis, PhD, MPH
National Academy of Sciences Washington, DC

Diane K. Wagener, PhD
National Center for Health Statistics Washington, DC

JAMA. 1989;261(18):2635-2636.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor. —

The report by the Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Ga, on mortality attributable to cigarette smoking¹ has led us to look further at respiratory cancers to see how much of these diseases might not be attributable to smoking.

The smoking-attributable fraction for bronchogenic cancer can be developed from published data² on the proportion of active smokers, the proportion of quit smokers, and the amounts smoked. From the data of Dorn and Hammond,³ the relative risk for smokers is roughly given by 1 plus half the number of cigarettes smoked per day. Assuming that the average quit smoker is at one third the excess risks of a continuing smoker, we find the following smoking-attributable fractions for lung cancer based on 1965 smoking patterns:

These smoking-attributable fractions imply that for recent lung cancer mortality⁴ (1984 data, allowing for roughly a 20-year latent period), the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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