Trends in Lung Cancer Incidence Worldwide

¹ The International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France.

The lung cancer epidemic still has a long time to run. Only in countries with long established exposure to the smoking habit, and in which low tar/filter cigarettes were introduced 30-40 years ago, is a downturn in the number of male cases at last being observed. If the majority of the world's population, who live in the developing world, achieve incidence rates such as the maximal observed in the UK, the number of cases will be enormous. In China, for example, if the incidence rates of Westernized Shanghai had been present in the whole country, 250,000 cases of lung cancer (72% in males) would have occurred in 1980, rather than the estimated 66,000.