ASH Daily News for 26 August 2008

Tobacco firms kept quiet on polonium role in cigarettes

Some of the world's biggest tobacco firms researched the lethal radioactive substance polonium – present in cigarettes – over a 40-year period but never published the results, according to a new scientific article. Experts have examined more than 1,500 internal documents from tobacco companies. Polonium 210 is known to cause lung cancers in animals and studies suggest it is responsible for 1 per cent of all lung cancers – equivalent to 11,700 deaths globally – each year in the US. It is also the substance that poisoned the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

Yet tobacco companies, while attempting but failing to remove the substance from their products, have kept quiet about their research, experts say. One of the documents – all of which were made public through legal actions – said publication would be "waking a sleeping giant". The authors of the article, published in the September edition of American Journal of Public Health, also say tobacco companies feared possible litigation.

The quoted studies show polonium is present on the tobacco leaf and inside it as part of its chemical make-up. Tobacco company scientists spent years trying to remove the substance by washing the leaf, achieving only partial success. Attempts at genetic modification and creating filters to remove it also failed.

The research article, led by Monique Muggli, from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, says: "Philip Morris documents show the majority of the company's internal reports regarding PO-210 [Polonium 210] were not published. One manuscript believed by some Philip Morris scientists to be favourable to the tobacco industry was withheld from publication for fear of heightening public awareness of PO-210."

It then quotes an internal document that says publication of that research, from 1978, "has the potential to wake a sleeping giant". Ms Muggli added that, while tobacco companies tried to obscure other health controversies, their line on polonium seemed to be simply not to raise the issue. "Unlike other smoking and health issues, where the industry line was to create doubt, in relation to polonium 210 and the radioactivity of cigarettes, the companies wanted to hide from that issue publicly. They continue to minimise the recognition of radioactivity in their products in smoking and health litigation," she said.

A spokeswoman for British American Tobacco said it was not known which constituents of cigarette smoke caused cancer and argued that polonium 210 is also present in food. "It's fairly common knowledge polonium 210 is in cigarette smoke because it's present in all such plant types, including strawberries," she said. "There was a 1977 study that found, of the daily intake of the polonium 210 in a smoker, 77.3 per cent came from food and 17 per cent from tobacco. The World Health Organisation is trying to determine which constituents of tobacco smoke are most important in diseases including lung cancer, but as yet have not concluded polonium 210 is a priority constituent."

A spokesman for Philip Morris said many reports into polonium and cigarette smoke had been published over the last 30 years and links were available on their website. He added that Philip Morris had published some of its research but no company would publish all its internal findings.

Source: The Independent, 24 August 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/65y5ef  

Tories say Labour neglects teenage health

The Conservatives yesterday charged the Labour government with creating a "teenage timebomb", presiding over a deterioration of teenage health that has seen the number of young people admitted to hospital annually rise by 23% since 2000. Using government statistics, the Tories issued a dossier showing that on six counts teenage health had got "steadily worse" since 2000, with the deterioration even more marked among early teens.

Rehearsing the party's central theme that the fabric of British society needs fundamental reform, the shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, said the figures were a "sad indictment of our broken society". The Tory attack comes a month after the government announced an initiative to improve care for adolescents. In July, the health secretary, Alan Johnson, launched the Adolescent Health Project in response to research showing young people's health had improved least of any age group in the last 40 years.

The government-funded project will be led by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and will see all doctors and nurses offered free training on issues affecting teenagers. Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer for England, also called for a new focus on teenage health in his annual report this year. He called for a national summit to take stock of health programmes and services for teenagers, more involvement of teenagers in the design of health services for them, and for the legal blood alcohol limit for drivers aged 17-20 to be reduced to zero.

Yesterday the Tories said admission to hospitals for alcohol abuse had increased by 51% to nearly 12,700 a year and admission to hospitals on smoking related illnesses had increased by 41% to 16,200 a year, though this had increased by 63% among 11- to 15-year-olds. In the same period teenagers admitted to hospital for drug abuse had risen by 2%. For early teenagers this had increased to 33% since 2000.

Their figures also showed stark regional variation, with a 118% increase in teen smoking in the north-east, and a 121% rise since 2000 in the number of 11- to 15-year-olds admitted to hospital in London for drug-related problems. The number of reported cases of sexually transmitted infections had also jumped in the last five years, up by 21% to more than 53,000. The number of abortions had risen by 15%, to 43,800. Nearly a third of children - 31% - were starting their teenage years obese.

Lansley called the teenagers a "forgotten generation".He said: "It's a sad indictment of our broken society that so many are turning to things like drug and alcohol abuse at such a young age."

The Tories propose to create public health funds using NHS money ring-fenced for this purpose, but yesterday Lansley described the problem within his party's broader broken society theme. He said the Conservatives would offer a comprehensive solution involving the strengthening of families, "radical" reform of the welfare system and the provision of more good school places.

Source: The Guardian, 26 August 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/6gmvdm

Pub bars no-cigs MP

An MP has been banned from his local pub for supporting the smoking ban.

Labour's David Heyes has been told he's not welcome at the Prince of Orange in Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester, after the ban halved business. Landlord Roger Hantulik, who has put up posters warning Mr Heyes to stay away, said: "He took away my choice to have smokers in my pub so I've taken away his choice to drink here. My old customers sit at home smoking and drinking cheap supermarket beer now. The pub is dying." But Mr Heyes shrugged off the ban, saying he had not been to the Prince of Orange for eight years. He added: "I'd vote for a ban again if I had to."
 

Source: The Sunday Mirror, 25 August 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/5zq6h6

Calif. stop-smoking campaign saved $86 billion: report

California's large-scale tobacco control campaign has saved $86 billion in health care costs in its first 15 years, U.S. researchers said on Monday. The $86 billion reduction in health costs, based on 2004 dollars, represents about a 50-fold return on the $1.8 billion California spent on the program, they said. "The benefits of the program accrued very quickly and are very large," Stanton Glantz, director of the University of California San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, said in a statement.

Unlike many programs which center on teens, the California program focuses its tobacco-control efforts on adults through an aggressive media campaign and changes in public policy, such as promoting smoke-free environments. "When adults stop smoking, you see immediate benefits in heart disease, with impacts on cancer and lung diseases starting to appear a year or two later," said Glantz, whose findings appear in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

According to the study, the program prevented the sale of 3.6 billion packs of cigarettes -- worth $9.2 billion to the tobacco industry -- between 1989 and 2004. The report may help persuade states to step up funding for such large-scale efforts to counteract the tobacco industry's $13 billion annual spending on smoking-related advertising and promotions.

A report by the National Cancer Institute last week found such advertising increases tobacco use. But it also found that large-scale tobacco control campaigns work, and called for more funding of such efforts. Tobacco accounts for one in 10 adult deaths worldwide and is the leading preventable cause of death in the world, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, smoking kills more than 400,000 people prematurely each year.
 

Source: Reuters, 25 August 2008 
Link: http://tinyurl.com/5egszt