Around 80% of lung cancers are found in smokers and another 10% with heavy exposure to second-hand smoke. Smoking is the single largest risk factor for lung cancer.
[0] All numbers are based on general population of US, so heavily white-skewed, I dunno about asian americans specifically.
However, COPD, once established, is irreversible.
My dad was a long time smoker and it was COPD that eventually got him. He battled it for years after he quit.
I am just trying to say that things that cause cancer are not as deterministic as we think.
to develop a cure, we must better understand the causal mechanisms.
this starts with acknowledging what we know and don't know about a devilishly complex disease that is arguably better conceptualized as a broad category rather than one monolith -- similar to how the flu, cold, and covid could be grouped under one mega classification, but are better identified as distinct conditions.
The reason why only 20% of smokers get cancer is similar to why a person doesn't get cancer after 1 cigarette.
This is only counterintuitive if your default thinking is that smoking=cancer. In reality, there are a lot of variable chemical and biological processes involved, but ultimately it ultimately boils down to a cumulative risk, not guarantee.
Longer answer: Logically, the answer should be zero, but it's actually not that simple to categorise either 'non-smokers' or 'a smoking-related illness'.
Taking lung cancer as an example, approximately 10-20% of lung cancers occur in folks who are non-smokers (defined as 'never' or 'fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime'). Researchers estimate that of these, around 20% are caused by second hand smoking, meaning that around 8-16% of lung cancers are non 'smoking related' in non-smokers. Not all lung cancers result in death.
So if we take the same approach, and consider the 80% of lung cancers which occur in smokers, presumably similarly 10-20% of those would have developed lung cancer regardless of whether they smoked or not, so potentially we would need to say that less than 65% of lung cancers are caused by smoking.
Is it then fair to call lung cancer a 'smoking-related illness', if more than a third of people who develop lung cancer did not do so because they themselves smoked[0] (the number changes to 70% if we consder the folks who hypothetically develop lung cancer due to second-hand smoking as 'smoking-related').
There are also a lot a problems with the methodology here. How do we know whether someone really smoked 100 cigarettes or fewer? Is there any statistically significant difference between people who smoked 100 and 1 000? 100 000? Does it matter if someone smoked all of those 10 000 in the last year (almost 30 a day) or whether they smoked those 10 000 over the past 50 years (less than a pack a month)? All of these things seem to my mind to be problematic and make it impossible to answer your question.
I suppose that means that I was overconfident in my assertion in the parent comment that '7/10 smokers die of smoking-related illnesses'. It was not unresearched (although uncited) and I got this number from this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/26/the-t..., which in turn reported on this study: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291....
However, perhaps I wasn't critical enough in my reading, and instead simply parroted the stat.
[0]: big caveat here is that my ramblings don't consider the possibility that a 50 year-old who would otherwise have developed lung cancer at 80 develops lung cancer as a result of smoking, and lung cancers caused by smoking stop lung cancers developing from other causes.
I don't immediately see Asian American women being exposed to additional regional air pollution, asbestos, coal soot, or radon more than others.
There could be a race-linked genetic factor, but I'm not aware of Asian women that are non-American having a higher rate. So I don't see why it would be something like... aspirated cooking oils fumes or natural gas fumes while cooking. Do Asian American households have a significantly higher likelihood of natural gas stoves? Do they have cultural histories of certain kinds of make-up or body treatments like talc?
The risk is real and measurable, but to put that in perspective: the CDC summary says it increases risk by 20-30%, so 130% over baseline to take the higher number https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/secondhand-smoke/health.html
For smokers, the risk is 15-30 times baseline, so 3000% over baseline for the high end https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm
The article indicates a 260% increased all-factor risk for never-smoking Asian women, compared to White women. There has to be more going on than just second-hand smoke exposure.
Cancer itself isn’t deterministic. This isn’t news. There is virtually nothing that is 100% guaranteed to produce cancer, but there are things that massively increase risk. Tobacco is one of them.
An estimated 72% of lung cancers in Canada are caused by tobacco (https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-conce...) Smokers are 25x more likely to die of lung cancer as nonsmokers. The US CDC estimates that smoking is linked to 80-90% of lung cancer deaths (https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm).
Saying “tobacco causes lung cancer” isn’t guaranteeing that smoking leads to lung cancer, but it sure as hell is the leading cause.
But what about stuff like the use of Teflon and other "forever" chemicals? These things may also be making a contribution.
It could also be a genetic defect. A liver cell growing in the lung.
Or maybe a staple food familiar to Asian women that is being contaminated with carcinogens.
Infact majority of people that smoke don't get Cancer (only about 30% in a group of smokers get lung cancer)
Edit: I don't mean it's comforting I prefer to have it at 0/10
I am just trying to say that things that cause cancer are not as deterministic as we think.