Surgeon General Updates Smoking Report

The newest U. S. Surgeon General's report on "The Health Consequences of Smoking" finds that cigarette smoking is conclusively linked to diseases such as leukemia, cataracts and pneumonia, and cancers of the cervix, kidney, pancreas and stomach.

The report was released recently by U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, M.D., 40 years after the first surgeon general's report concluded that smoking was a definite cause of three serious diseases.

The new report examines cancer, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, and adverse reproductive and other effects. It provides an update, evaluation and synthesis of evidence on the health consequences of active smoking.

"We've known for decades that smoking is bad for your health, but this report shows that it's even worse than we knew," Carmona says. "The toxins from cigarette smoke go everywhere blood flows. I'm hoping this new information will help motivate people to quit smoking and convince young people not to start in the first place."

Major conclusions

The four major conclusions of the report are:

• Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, causing many diseases and damaging the health of smokers in general
• Quitting smoking has immediate as well as long-term benefits, reducing risks for diseases caused by smoking and improving health in general
• Smoking cigarettes with lower machine-measured yields of tar and nicotine provides no clear health benefit
• The list of diseases caused by smoking has been expanded to include abdominal aortic aneurysm, acute myeloid leukemia, cataracts, cervical cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, pneumonia, periodontitis and stomach cancer

"The Health Consequences of Smoking" is available at the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwebsite.

Additional information about the report and a free copy of the executive summary are available from the Centers for Disease Control Office on Smoking and Health. Call (866) 512-1800 or go to http://bookstore.gpo.gov/.