ASH Daily news for 24 June 2010
HEADLINES
- Pregnancy smoking test suggested
- Study: Secondhand smoke can double risk of fatal heart disease
- Quit smoking campaign wins support from Vera Duckworth actress
- BAT names next CEO
- Philip Morris International in Brazil tobacco source deal
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Pregnancy smoking test suggested
All pregnant women should be tested for smoking so that they can be given quitting advice if necessary, a health watchdog says.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said carbon monoxide tests should be carried out on every expectant mother.
If implemented, every woman would have the breath test at her first ante-natal appointment.
Midwives criticised the test, saying it could make the women feel "guilty".
NICE said the guidelines were not aimed at penalising smokers but were designed to help women and their families give up smoking during and after pregnancy.
"During pregnancy, smoking puts the health of the women and her unborn baby at great risk both in the short and long-term, and small children who are exposed to second-hand smoke are more likely to suffer from respiratory problems," Professor Mike Kelly, Nice director of the centre of public health excellence, said.
"One of our recommendations is for midwives to encourage all pregnant women to have their carbon monoxide levels tested and discuss the results with them.
"This isn't to penalise them if they have been smoking, but instead will be a useful way to show women that both smoking and passive smoking can lead to having high levels of carbon monoxide in their systems."
The guidelines were welcomed by the Royal College of Midwives, but it urged "non-judgemental" support for women smokers.
RCM education and research manager Sue Macdonald said: "There appears to an emphasis on pregnant women, which is appropriate given the evidence. However, the key issue here for NICE is their emphasis on the monitor.
"It is crucial that health practitioners, including midwives, focus on being supportive rather than making women feeling guilty, or as though they may not be truthful.
"Use of the monitor has the potential to make women feel guilty and not engaged. We need to look at a range of individualised interventions for women that meet their needs and aspirations."
The cost of the monitors also raised concerns for the RCM, as well as safety, infection control, and "whether this is the best use of funds to address smoking cessation," she said.
Links to further coverage:
The Telegraph: http://bit.ly/cP1xUd
The Mirror: http://bit.ly/9zS1Sy
The Daily Mail: http://bit.ly/9Y1Kr4
Source: BBC News, 24 June 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/cnkMjM -
Study: Secondhand smoke can double risk of fatal heart disease
People who breathe in a lot of secondhand tobacco smoke are twice as likely to die from heart disease as those exposed to lower levels of secondhand smoke, according to a British study.
The findings, which add to the growing body of evidence linking secondhand smoke to cardiovascular disease, came from a study by University College London of more then 13,000 people in England and Scotland.
Researchers used a saliva test that can measure the amount of secondhand smoke people have been exposed to and followed the group for an average of 8 years, keeping track of who developed heart disease and who died.
Over the course of the study, 32 out of about 1,500 people who had never smoked but were exposed to high levels of secondhand smoke died of heart disease, compared to 15 out of about 1,000 "never-smokers" with low exposure.
Researcher Dr. Mark Hamer said analyses restricted to never-smokers found that high secondhand smoke exposure was associated with more than a two-fold increased risk of dying from heart disease.
A "high" level of exposure, Hamer explained, would be equivalent to living with a smoker and getting exposed to secondhand smoke pretty much every day.
About 1 in 5 of the people in the study had high exposure levels, according to the saliva test.
People exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke, as well as smokers themselves, were younger and more likely to be male, worse off financially, and less physically active than people with low exposure.
But even when controlling for these potentially confounding factors, the link between secondhand smoke exposure and heart disease remained.
The study is published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Hamer's team also found evidence, as have other research teams, that secondhand smoke triggers inflammation in the body, a known risk factor for heart disease
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Source: The Daily Sun, New York, 23 June 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/btkg07 -
Quit smoking campaign wins support from Vera Duckworth actress
Coronation street legend Liz Dawn has backed The Sentinel's quit smoking campaign.
Liz – who played Vera Duckworth for 34 years in the long-running soap – suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and believes she would have died if she hadn't beaten her 20-a-day habit.
She said: "I was diagnosed with lung disease eight years ago. I thought I just had asthma, so it was a shock."
"I had been getting out of breath really quickly. It got so that if I was doing a scene on Coronation Street, I would get to the set while the scene before was being filmed. I would have to sit down straight away."
"I went to see a specialist and he told me I only had one third of my lung capacity working. "I was dying. I knew I couldn't carry on smoking. I had smoked for years. I started when I was about 14."
"I couldn't answer the telephone without a cigarette. If I went out for a meal, I would even smoke between courses.
"Cigarettes rule you. But I did like a smoke."
Liz, now an ambassador for the British Lung Foundation, suffers from a form of COPD called emphysema, a long-term progressive disease of the lung. It occurs when tiny air sacs in the lungs become damaged, losing their elasticity and becoming like half-deflated balloons, causing shortness of breath.
She now takes a range of tablets to keep her air tubes open and inhalers to reduce inflammation.
The 71-year-old, who grew up in Leeds, said: "Smoking is the hardest thing to give up, especially for a lot of older people. Smoking is the worst habit you can get, but it is only when you are ill you realise it."
The Sentinel is campaigning to get 2,010 more people to quit smoking in 2010.Source: thisisstaffordshire, 23 June 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/cebgGo -
BAT names next CEO
Paul Adams is to retire next year after seven years as chief executive of British American Tobacco and will be succeeded by Nicandro Durante, the group’s current chief operating officer.
“This is the right time to make a change, both for me and for the company,” said Mr Adams, who has worked at BAT since 1991 and made Lucky Strike, Dunhill, Kent and Pall Mall its so-called “Global Drive” brands.
The 53 year old Brazilian-Italian Mr Durante joined BAT in 1981 and will become chief executive designate on September 1. His successor as chief operating officer will be John Daly, another long-serving BAT employee who joined the group in 1994. He also takes up his post on September 1. The shares opened down 0.6 per cent at £21.41.
Under Mr Adams, BAT has sought to build sales in emerging markets as tobacco consumption in western European markets such as the UK decline after governments banned smoking in public places and launched anti-smoking health campaigns.
In a six day period in 2008 it snapped up Tekel Cigarette, the state-owned Turkish cigarette group, for $1.72bn and purchased Denmark-based Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni, one of the Nordic region’s biggest tobacco groups, in a deal valued at £2.05bn overall. He was also monitoring opportunities in emerging markets like Algeria and Egypt.
The smooth succession planning for BAT’s chief executive comes in stark contrast to the controversy the group courted when it appointed Richard Burrows, the former Bank of Ireland governor, as its new chairman last summer. One of the City’s leading institutional investors queried the appointment as it came only months after he had apologised to the bank’s investors for its poor performance.
BAT also said that Kieran Poynter, the former chairman and senior partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, would become a non-executive director from July 2010.
Source: The Financial Times, 24 June 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/cuvtYX -
Philip Morris International in Brazil tobacco source deal
Philip Morris International (PMI) said it had reached two deals to buy tobacco leaf directly from some 17,000 farmers in southern Brazil.
PMI's Brazil affiliate, Philip Morris Brazil, said the tobacco purchased in the new arrangement will account for about 10 percent of its global supply needs and will allow the company to improve cost efficiencies and better align its supply with market demand.
The deals with Alliance One International (AOI) and Universal Leaf Tabacos Limitada are expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter, according to a company statement. The transactions need to be approved by Brazilian authorities.
Philip Gorham, an analyst with Morningstar, said the move probably would not affect PMI much financially because tobacco costs represent a small percentage of total operating costs.
"This is really just a shift in how they get their raw tobacco," Gorham said. "It's not going to impact their earnings much at all."
Universal has a similar deal in the United States that allows PMI to buy its own tobacco and process it with dealers, said Karen Whelan, vice president and treasurer of Universal.
AOI, a North Carolina-based tobacco merchant, said its Brazilian unit would give PMB contracts with about 8,500 farmers and would sell some of its inventory management software and other related assets to PMB.
Universal said it signed over about 20 percent of its contracts with farmers in Brazil.
Source: Reuters, 21 June 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/btH7cO
