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Lung Cancer : Causes And Effects

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The leading cause of cancer death for both men and women in the United States and worldwide is lung cancer. Lung cancer is responsible for thirty percent of cancer deaths in the United States. The deaths caused by breast cancer, colon cancer and prostate cancer combined do not add up to the deaths that lung cancer causes. In 2007, 158,683 people, 88,243 men and 70,354 women died from lung cancer in the United States (Eldridge, 2012). Out of the 158,683 people that died from lung cancer in 2007, 135,000 of them died of lung cancer caused by smoking cigarettes. The overall survival rate of those with lung cancer is at about fifteen percent.
Causes of Lung Cancer:
Lung cancer can be caused by multiple factors and many factors can work together to cause someone to have lung cancer. Besides smoking, radon, secondhand smoke, the environment and someone’s occupation can all cause lung cancer. As we already know smoking is the number one cause of lung cancer cases worldwide and over forty-three million people just in the United States smoke cigarettes. There are more than fifty chemicals in tobacco smoke that are ingested each time someone smokes. Some of these chemicals include benzene (which can be found in pesticides and gasoline), Formaldehyde (which preserve dead bodies), pesticides (which are found on lawns and gardens) and Tobacco-specific N-nitrosamines (Martin, 2012). When a person inhales the chemicals in cigarettes, they inhale thousands of poisons, toxic metals, and

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