Smoking Death Toll - We all know smoking cigarettes is detrimental to health and kills, however according to a new study the habit has claimed far more lives than previously estimated.
According to researchers from the American Cancer Society, smoking has claimed the lives of over 540,000 people. This is more than the U.S. Surgeon General's 480,000 annual estimate.
The findings of the study is based on health data from 1 million men and women aged 55 and older in a span of 10 years. Results reveal that 60,000 more people in the U.S. die yearly from diseases not normally associated with smoking.
"The Surgeon General's report claims 480,000 deaths caused by smoking, but we think that is really quite a bit off," said lead researcher Brian Carter, an epidemiologist at the cancer society.
"Sixty thousand [extra] deaths is really a lot," he added. "That's more than the number of people killed each year by flu or motor vehicle accidents."
According to the report published on Feb. 12 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the diseases not usually associated with tobacco include kidney failure, intestinal disease, infections, heart disease caused by high blood pressure (hypertension) as well as breathing problems, breast and prostate cancer.
"The number of additional deaths potentially linked to cigarette smoking is substantial," said co-author Eric Jacobs, strategic director of pharmacoepidemiology at the Cancer Society.
"In our study, many excess deaths among smokers were from disease categories that are not currently established as caused by smoking, and we believe there is strong evidence that many of these deaths many have been caused by smoking."
Researchers called on health officials to making smoking a health priority.
"Though we've made great gains in reducing rates of smoking, tobacco control needs to remain a top health priority. We cannot rest on past tobacco control successes," said Dr. Graham Colditz, a professor of surgery at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
"It is the primary cause of preventable disease and death," he added. "And we need to continue to build on the progress we've made and work toward a future endgame for tobacco--a time when it is all but eliminated as a health issue."
