The myth is that Smoking always causes Lung Cancer, and health officials are quick to blame smoking for anything from a slight cough or cold, to a full blown life threatening disease. As Bill Hicks once said, non-smokers die from Cancer, every day. Lets take a look at this idea, and break it down a little.
Cancer is a particle of living matter, which floats around in the air, like any other germ. People breath in 100s of these things, every day, and 99.9999999 of these are flushed out by the body or terminated with the immune system. We humans have a very strong natural resistance to all of these airborne raiders, unless we are put under stress. Stress weakens the immune system enough that cancers can find a home somewhere in a corner of the body. If it settles in the stomach, its stomach cancer, its it the colon, its colon cancer. The Lungs are one of the strongest organs in the body, its has to be to breath in an out every day for so many years, and does a very good job of filtering out this stuff.
That is unless the lungs are placed under stress from forced breathing. This occurs in people who are unfit or obese, but also people who like jogging or running to keep fit, playing the sports field, singing, playing the trumpet. Statistics show that 1940s/50/60s baseball players, singers, and people who like to keep fit, were more likely to get lung cancer, even if they never smoked a cigarette in their life. Anti-smoking lobbies are quick to point out that in all these cases, passive smoking was the culprit, but does this really account for Lung cancer now in the 'clean air' 21st century, when non-smokers are still dying every day?
"[2001 figures] About 32,000 Americans die each year who never touched a cigarette but die of lung cancer anyway."
(out of an estimated 443,000 premature American deaths attributed to smoking each year)
"Opera legend Beverly Sills never smoked. Neither did actress and health advocate Dana Reeve, wife of the late actor Christopher Reeve. Joan Scarangello, an ABC and NBC journalist and lifelong fitness and runner non-smoker who fell victim at age 47 to lung cancer in 2001."
We know the chance of getting lung cancer can be increased in smokers, but if you found out you had lung cancer tomorrow, having never smoked, perhaps you'd feel a bit ripped off by life. The only thing which could help prevent Lung Cancer would be to wear a hepa filter mask over your whole face, or breath pure bottled air which has been filtered. The rest of us have roughly an equal chance of catching anything, which is roughly 1 in 5 will die from some form of Cancer, depending on the immune system (smokers and non-smokers).
Some people even claim that smoking can harm the immune system, others says it hardens the immune system. All we know for sure is, life is short, for smokers and non-smokers.
Source:
health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/cancer/articles/2011/12/02/lung-cancers-hidden-victims-those-who-never-smoked
