[red-iron-pine]

1) people smoked a lot more in the post WWI econ boom

2) additives or even just paper compound the negative effects of the smoke on the lungs.

like, firefighters - who usually have physical fitness requirements and don't smoke - see rates of lung cancer similar to moderate smokers, simply due to the higher volume of particulate and chems hitting their lungs.

it is dose-dependant, and firefighers who see more fires see more cancer. occasional tobacco pipe smokers in 1850 saw less lung cancer than 2-pack-a-day post-WW2 smokers.

[sarchertech]

I’m unsure where your firefighters have the same lung cancer risk as moderate smokers information comes from, but it’s wrong.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7063017/

Here’s an meta-analysis of 49 studies that shows no increase in lung cancer.

And of course it’s dose dependent. But newer studies show that years smoking is much more important than intensity when it comes to lung cancer risk. So smoking half a pack a day for 20 years is worse than a pack a day for 10 years.

Dry snuff comes with a 2-8x increase in oral cancer and a 10-12x increase in nasal and sinus cancer.

Tobacco is a carcinogen—even without additives. In addition to epidemiological evidence we have a plausible mechanism of action.

Alkaloids in the leaf convert into carcinogenic TSNAs during curing, aging, or drying. Tobacco plants absorbs heavy metals. And tobacco plants absorb polonium-210.

There’s a lot of misinformation and misleading interpretations out there that come from years of the tobacco industry attempting to create uncertainty. Especially with your firefighter myth, I think you might have got hold of some of it.