Smoking kills 500,000 Americans annually

A new study published in the journal, Epidemiology, has found 291,000 smoking-attributable deaths among men and 229,000 such deaths among women annually in the United States from 2002 through 2006. Slightly more men seem to suffer from tobacco-related deaths each year than women, though rates for women were higher than expected, according to researchers. Dr. Brian Rostron of the University of California, Berkeley, used data from a national health survey to obtain these results. Among all current and former smokers, the greatest increase in risk of a tobacco-related death occurred between the ages of 65 and 74. After accounting for other factors such as weight and alcohol consumption, people in that age group were three times as likely to die from any cause if they currently smoked between one and two packs of cigarettes a day, compared to those who had never smoked. Though America has seen great progress in smoking cessation, much still remains to be done.