This is not a proper scientific observation, but it's my strong impression that tobacco smoking plus anything else is a major cause of cancer.
I.e. it's not the smoking per se that gets you (in this way, it does a lot of other types of damage), but doing it in combination with any of the following examples is a bad idea:
Living in a polluted city. One researcher told me around 1980 that Kansas wheat farmers will have some lung diseases from that occupation, but they stay relatively cancer free. Whereas jogging in the Boston urban area was none too good for your lungs.
Radon. The initial study that got everyone upset about it (note that it's no longer a "big" thing) was based on uranium miners. Who got not only a big radon dose but who were mostly heavy smokers.
I forget if birth control pills + smoking = cancer, but as I recall the combination of the two is rather unhealthy.
Anyway, the point here is that tobacco smoking may be more of a cancer promotion cause than a cause per se. Needless to say, determining that through epidemiology is hard and it's not like it changes the public health message.
I.e. it's not the smoking per se that gets you (in this way, it does a lot of other types of damage), but doing it in combination with any of the following examples is a bad idea:
Living in a polluted city. One researcher told me around 1980 that Kansas wheat farmers will have some lung diseases from that occupation, but they stay relatively cancer free. Whereas jogging in the Boston urban area was none too good for your lungs.
Radon. The initial study that got everyone upset about it (note that it's no longer a "big" thing) was based on uranium miners. Who got not only a big radon dose but who were mostly heavy smokers.
I forget if birth control pills + smoking = cancer, but as I recall the combination of the two is rather unhealthy.
Anyway, the point here is that tobacco smoking may be more of a cancer promotion cause than a cause per se. Needless to say, determining that through epidemiology is hard and it's not like it changes the public health message.