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| Number of Deaths Attributed to Smoking as a Percentage of Total Deaths by Age and Sex, 1990 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Source:
Source: Liu, B.Q., Peto, R., Chen,
Z.M., Boreham, J., Wu,Y.P., Li, J.Y., Campbell, T.C. and Chen, J.S.
(1998). Emerging tobacco hazards in China: 1. Retrospective
proportional mortality study of one million deaths.
British Medical Journal
317 (7170): 1411-1422.
Peto, R., Chen, Z.M. and Boreham, J. (1999). Tobacco – the growing
epidemic. Nature
Medicine 5(1): 15-17 Note: The original table was recalculated into percentages. |
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Almost two decades ago, smoking was already a major health problem in China. According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, some 13 percent of all male deaths in 1990 were smoking-related. More than half of all deaths due to lung cancer among men age 35-69 were related to smoking. This situation has almost certainly further deteriorated during the past two decades, as more people in China now can afford to smoke and smoking has become a sign of prosperity and modernization. Today, smoking among men is probably the most serious public health problem in China - far more serious than HIV/AIDS or SARS. |
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