Document nmL27nk891jxRjbn3DrNe711m

URL 05170 ByTbeAsiidate4P)re : j Whatever yon do -- or don't dq -- these 'days seems to increase your chance of get ting cancer. ^ ^ ^ simply exis^ and the risk is there. C' In the past six months alone, there have been new warnings ahoat coffee, water, hair dye, drugs, rood and dga* trettes.Even the airls suspect The warnings usually stem from testa on , ^laboratory ampuls. The resenEcheriipoint -out that in many cases there is oo mrect ."proof that a particular substance will cause ^icahcer in hnmans. flu findings are cooched .in terms of "possibilities* amT"potentials." - Take the latest report oo coffee, released last week. A study tn Harvard University researchers concluded that people who drink amp crtwo of coffee a day are near ly twice as likely as non-drinkers to get 'cancer of the pnnrrw The adodsts did Coot advise people to stop drinking coffee. " - said ontothat tterojfa* a "smpirion" ed the risks,from lead acetate weren't se Cancer is the natioo's second leading vere enshdi to increut its use in some hair cause of death; hrfttnd heartdisease. H# dye* Starts* snort that animabcarget1 pie in the United St^^wflTdie af cancm cancer when fed large amounts of lead. Bat th*FDAntfSastyear that the amountof thisyear- one every 75 seconds^ *: ^ *' * hairdye ^NatiouaTcancer Instib^sa^/Tlie out b'"triviaL" The agency jrtMfsrfi'is could. continue. to ise look is not hopeless." The encouraging as a crtsfadditive-althoiigb words art part of the introduction to an to- 'toprt'a waning label on - stitnte-gUMe on cancer.'Tbe titiet^^Evcry^ */.v th^DoemtCaamCdato;^^ ,Jp' ` You're willing to giveqpcoffee, yon say? r.Howabort` * Researchers at Texas AAM University Try to etiminate'dnehealth rbk,and said earlier this year Oat they had tested ^the.air ooa Padfic island so remote it was :;choaea as the site of the first hydrogen bomb test They found toxic chemicals -- not from the bomb test, but from hfexadorobenxe (HCB), which causes cancer in ani- .mala and is a byproduct of more than a dosen manufacturing processes. The conclu sion: There is "no place on Earth yon can go -without finding BOB? may create another. Many people, for example, are trying to fedeoetnefr carat of heart disease by cuttbig down oochoksteroi Bnt a January report in the Journal of the American Medical Association laid Mir levels of Mood cholesterol were Untod to cancer of the colon or large intestine. Some situations come down to a matter of which risk is worse. More thait one milUoh Americans take thcfcig reserpine to Not onfr can't yep breathe the air, -may not be able to drink the water. Robert Harris, a member of the U.S. Coun cil on BnriroementalQoaiitv. told a control Ugh blood pressoreLaaf/all, the. NatippaLCanor Institute srifTrceerpiae caoses.cancer in animahand is "a potential risk UfmaiLfRut (T .......... lLL STREET JOURNAL, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1980 making Looking at the Ways We Die c 2D of By Harry Schwartz age distribution it bad in 1940-tiie figures mouth and nose, cancer of the genitalia. isiness Americans are more hypochondriacal than ever in our history, some observers suggest. Whatever the truth of that, it is evident that a morbid preoccupation with show that in 1978 the age-adjusted death rate was 40% less than It was In 1940. Just since 1960 the age-adjusted death rate has declined by almost 20%. U1IWI U1 UlU lllliUj i sisleilf! %i 1IIB lllPlftMl B&th raftf ley H. Clark Jr.----- Old Gome ve officials wonder why uch trouble getting the der control. Fed Chalt er, altogether inadverclue the other day. /as testifying before the Monetary Policy subcomn Cavanaugh, a young Omaha, began ashing death is a major component of the national scene. Day after day, we are told that the air we breathe, the water and other bever ages we drink, the food we ingest, and the substances we come into contact with at our jobs are all dangerous or potentially dangerous to our health. Cancerpbobia is, of course, the most! prominent component of this obsession.) Claims that we are caught in a "cancer ep idemic'' arise from many sources, and we are warned that we may get cancer from the sun that shines upon us, the frankfurt ers we eat at the ball park, the saccharin ;in the soft drinks we use to try to control The obverse side of these data is the steadily rising expectation of life for the newborn. A baby bore in 1930 could expect a life span of 60 years; one born in 1978 could expect 73.3 years. A female Ameri can bora in 1978 could expect to live 78 years, while a baby boy could ex pect almost T9 years. All the 1978 figures were record highs. What are the causes of death in this country? In 1978 the largest single killer. What are the causes of his Immediately, and deservedly, fo cuses attention on lung cancer. The overall age-adjusted increase in lung cancer in 1978 was 3.2%. while for white women the increase was a whopping 7.7%. The figures seem to speak for them selves. Insofar as the rate of cancer deaths In this country is rtsing^^g ^ngle largest ~eofhparisbn, tSTTncrease' death rate from lung cancer for white males was only 1.8%, while the Increases were even smaller for non-white males and females. Aside from, lung cancer, in 1978 our weight, the exhaust gases from our death m this country? In deaths from all other major forms of can i noted that the central cars, etc. Some zealots are already com- ink reserves rapidly be-. "plaining that too many Americans are dis October. Banks have to regarding warnings about carcinogens be inst the deposits on their cause they have been convinced by earlier they get more reserves scares that everything causes cancer, and, more. loans and tnvest- I therefore, all one can do is relax and en- that increase their de- |joy. 3ney supply. This background gives special interest naugh was implying was increasing reserves, was problem It professed not to a government publication, "Final Mor tality Statistics, 1978," just issued by the National Center for Health Statistics. Arrayed in precise columns are statis tics on bow many Americans died in 1978 1978 the largest single killer was heart disease, which was responsible for almost 38% of all deaths. A dis tant second was cancer, which killed about 20% of all who died. cer either declined or remained the same. Danger Posed by Smoking ^ Tbe public health Implications of these official government data would seem un mistakable. The most effective way to combat future Increases in cancer deaths would be an all-out campaign against cigarets. th* riantrpr tn American lives posed bv smoking is far greater thanlrom asbestog, saccharin, the exhaust erf cnqTmcaf tlflflHgs. tiie emanations from dumping grounds of chemical waste like the Love deer patiently sought to iaha legislator that there reserves: those that are ie Federal Reserve and If you want to see what he indicated, you should >d reserves supplied to we do on our own initia- became a little convo ke chairman seemed to letary growth caused the s. "Total reserves/' be money supply." But Mr. avanaugfc soon got to the -r. reserves, the chairman and earlier, as well as an elaborate analy sis of what they died of. Here, if anywhere, it would seem, is the evidence needed to tell whether our hypochondria is Justified. All humans die eventually, of course, but are we departing now in unusually large numbers and is cancer the most potent killer? ^Hlrd as It may be for some people to believe, the overall message is largely re* assurinf iters almost no support for most of the scaremongers. Lowest Crude Death Rate Why then is all the fury of current popu was heart lar environmental and health crusaders aimed at nuclear power plants, the oil and all whft Hied Th* *-*fll sse: chemical Industries, etc.? Wouldn't all that energy and will for public improvement be far more fruitfully employed if directed against tobacco? I don't feel capable of answering these questions adequately, though they have long disturbed me. Could it be that it is are determined to view ev dramatic to oppose nuclear power and bor ery statistic as darkly as possible will ing to Insist that one's friends and relatives probably Interject: "Ah, but the rate of give up smoking-or even that the cru cancer deaths was higher than in 1977. sader himself quit the cigaret habit? How do you explain that?" Certainly it is hard to doubt that the The crude death rate from cancer votes In tiie major tobacco-growing and 1978 did rise almost 1.5%. But to under processing states probably had something stand what happened and why to do with the Carter administration's re : "held pretty dose to Preliminary figures Indicate that In 1979 ullustied cent silence about the importance of stop o the present. The surge the U.S. bad the lowest crude death rate in ping smoking. Joseph Callfano, whatever ned from borrowing at its history, 8.66 deaths per thousand popu When that is done, it his other virtues and faults, did try to window. , who obviously believes reserves, asked: "You're rrowed reserves are not e growth of the money lation. This was below both the 1978 figure of 8^3 and l97Ts 8.78. in aU three years fewer than 2 million Americans died an nually, well under 1% of our population. The picture becomes even brighter when one considers we have a rapidly ag it Bjnjl ftf th* miuiw ri*ath rat* in. v.h m rirm fftf MJSSL nlevertneless, .data ihnw a rts^ justed mount a significant anti-smoking cam paign. It is likely that many bureaucrats have made a connection between his undig nified ouster and his naivete about the re lationship between tobacco state votes and the needs of the administration. ing population, and for that reason alone a decline in deaths from rves support monetary one would expect the crude rate to rise. most major cancers and an Increase in er conceded, but they're Adjusting for age - that ts, calculating only two cancer categories. Horry Scftworte ions n member of the it a freebie, so to speak, what the death rate would be If the Ameri ieditorial board Of The New York Times mt to borrow, and the can population every year had the same 1951 to Ms retirement in late 1979. wing will exert some re- > lender, of course, the slap the hands of a bor- Letters to theEditor: o the till too often. tt What we've been "H * Thom.trwth*. 4.Ur TT7_1 7 T> u