[Intl-tobacco] Smoking 'cause' of death inequality

[robert weissman]

=09http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-5950143,00.html *

Smoking 'cause' of death inequality*

Press Association
*Friday July 14, 2006 3:23 AM*

Smoking is to blame for half of the social inequality difference in male
death rates, a study has shown.

Death rates among men from lower social class, income or education
brackets are twice as high as those among men higher up society's ladder.

Researchers reporting in The Lancet medical journal said half of this
difference could be attributed to smoking, with less privileged men more
likely to smoke.

The team, led by Professor Prabhat Jha from the University of Toronto in
Canada, looked at nearly 600,000 deaths in men aged 35 to 69 in England
and Wales, Canada, the United States and Poland.

In each case the number of deaths attributable and not attributable to
smoking in three social bands was estimated.

For England and Wales, death rates in the highest and lowest social
classes were compared. Similar comparisons were made based on high and
low income in Canada, and completed years of education in the United
States and Poland.

On average there was a 19% difference between ends of the social
spectrum in death rates in each country.

The scientists used lung cancer deaths as an indirect method of
assessing the contribution of smoking to mortality.

They found that half the death rate inequalities between social strata,
12% on average, could be blamed on smoking.

Co-author Professor Richard Peto, from the University of Oxford, said:
"Across two continents, we find that smoking-related diseases account
for well over half of the big difference in death rates between rich and
poor."

=A9 Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved.