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VOL. 6 • NO. 3
© November 2011
Making smoking history: Quitting now is the best cure despite recent medical advances Kim McNeill didn’t realize that her habit of smoking just a few cigarettes a day could result in lung cancer. A few years ago she was diagnosed and treated for Stage 3B — a very advanced — lung cancer at Boston Medical Center. (Yawu Miller photo)
Kim McNeill was 21 years old when she tried her first cigarette and learned to blow smoke rings. “I was trying to be cute,” she remembered. After a while, McNeill said she would find any excuse to light up — after meals, talking on the phone, waiting for a bus — and thought her habit of four or five cigarettes a day was relatively harmless. It wasn’t. Those “excuses” began to take a toll. McNeill got a persistent cough that didn’t go away. “I thought I had a cold,” she said. But the cough got worse and the chest pains intensified. When tightness in her chest crept in, she knew something was wrong. “I thought I had pneumonia,” she said. A series of tests in the emergency room at Boston Medical Center produced a different diagnosis — cancer. “It sounded like
death to me,” McNeill remembered. “I went home and I cried. It was the worst sensation in the world.” Given the nature of lung cancer, McNeill’s fears were real. The American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates that in 2011 lung cancer will account for almost 157,000 — or 27 percent — of all cancer deaths, making it the most deadly of all cancers. The disease is more lethal than cancers of the breast, colon, prostate and liver combined. At more than 221,000 new cases each year it is second only to prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women. The tragedy is that lung cancer is largely preventable. The ACS estimates that almost 90 percent of all lung cancer deaths are attributed to smoking and exposure to second-hand smoke. The longer a person smokes and the more cigarettes smoked,
the greater the risk. Roughly 443,000 deaths a year are caused by cigarette smoking, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and that includes more than 15 different types of cancer as well as several cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Smoking affects every organ in the body. Lung cancer takes a long period of time to develop. Dr. Michael Ebright, assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery and co-director of the Lung Cancer CyberKnife Program at Boston Medical Center, explained that the time lapse gives some smokers the feeling that they have beaten the odds. “Most people start [smoking] in their teens,” Ebright said, “but don’t develop cancer until their 50’s or 60’s.There’s a latency period before you develop cancer.” But Ebright is quick to point out that there are some lung cancers that are extremely aggressive and develop quickly. The signs and symptoms of the disease are many — a persistent cough, coughing up blood, chest pains, shortness of breath, wheezing or hoarseness. But these can indicate a myriad of other illnesses as well. “A new cough that has been persistent is cause for concern,” he explained. “Any time you cough up blood requires a trip to the doctor.” But often, according to Ebright, by the time the symptoms emerge, the disease has advanced. “Only 20-25 percent are discovered early,” he said. And that is not good. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has determined that the 5-year survival rate for cases that have metastasized or spread beyond the lungs drops to under 4 percent. Though lung cancer remains the most deadly cancer and the second most common cancer in both men and women, improvements are beginning to emerge. New cases of the disease are dropping in this country, particularly in the West, according to the latest figures from the CDC. Rates of deaths are on the decline as well. Yet, despite these changes, the impact of lung cancer is hard on black males. Although the incidence and death rates of lung cancer are comparable in black and white women, black men pose a different problem. According to data from the NCI, the incidence and death McNeill, continued to page 4
Health experts warn against second-hand and now third-hand smoke It took a while before 70-year-old Meena Carr figured out that her scratchy throat and persistent cough was attributable to her husband’s second-hand smoke. “You have a problem, but you live with it so long, you’re not aware of it,” she explained. But it was the plight of her grandson who had asthma that triggered Carr to take action. “You wouldn’t understand until your child wakes you up in the middle of the night saying ‘I can’t breathe,’ ” she said. The family never attributed his multiple visits to the emergency room to exposure to tobacco — especially since no one in the household smoked at the time. But the neighbors did. That’s when Carr said she realized that closing the front door does not provide a protective barrier from another person’s smoke. Carr, a non-smoker, did not sit idly by. She and a small group of residents decided that the new Washington-Beech Housing Development under construction in Roslindale would be smoke-free. They solicited the assistance of the Committee for Boston Public Housing (CBPH) whose mission is to “improve the quality of life for Boston’s public housing residents.” The CBPH did a survey and discovered that buildings that had a higher rate of kids with asthma also had a higher number of smokers. That was not unusual. According to a report cited by the Boston Public Health Commission, more than 23 percent of residents in Boston public housing had asthma compared to 15
Meena Carr (left) and Westlyn Bruno are members of a committee that was successful in making Washington-Beech, a public housing development in Roslindale, smokefree. (Ernesto Arroyo Photo) percent of residents in non-public housing. Armed with that information, the group began a campaign to educate the residents of the perils of smoking — not only for
the smoker, but for innocent bystanders. Especially children. The message was often directed to parents who tried to protect their children by smoking outside of their presence. “You have a baby and you smoke at work,” she explained. “When you come in from work and hold your baby close to you, your baby inhales the fumes. You’re the one who is causing the problem.” The residents listened and responded. When a grant was given to build the new Washington Beech, more than 80 percent of the residents — even the smokers — agreed to make the complex a no-smoking residence. That is also the goal of the Boston Public Health Commission. They are launching the Boston Smoke-Free Homes campaign and are asking property owners to register their apartments and rental homes as smoke-free (www.bostonsmokefreehomes. org). Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino is taking this pledge one step further and is proposing to make all developments in the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) smoke-free in 2012. It is well known that second-hand smoke — the combination of the burning end of a tobacco product and the smoke breathed out by smokers — can cause heart disease and lung cancer in non-smokers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), second-hand smoke causes roughly 46,000 premature deaths each year in this country from heart disease and another 3,400 from lung cancer. There are many perks to going smoke-free. Cost is one. A
Carr, continued to page