Smoking & Lung Cancer

> In 2010, 222,520 people (116,750 men and 105,770 women) in the U.S. will be diagnosed with lung cancer. 157,300 will die from the disease.

> There are more than 94 million current and former smokers in the U.S. at high risk for lung cancer. In 2008, an estimated 20.6 percent of American adults were smokers.

> Lung cancer is by far the leading cancer killer in the U.S. Cigarette smoking is the number one risk factor for developing lung cancer.

> Unfortunately, lung cancer also strikes many non-smokers (which some studies suggest could be as much as 20 percent of all cases). The results of the NLST study are unable to answer important questions about what to do to minimize the risk of lung cancer among non-smokers.

Source: National Cancer Institute