China faces smoking-related health crisis

China may be headed for a tobacco-related health crisis, U.S. researchers said Friday.

Tulane University rsearchers surveyed 15,540 adults between the ages of 35 and 74 as a part of the International Collaborative Study of Cardiovascular Disease in Asia. The found that 60 percent Chinese men and 10 percent of Chinese women either smoke or have smoked. Two out of five non-smokers are exposed to second-hand smoke at home. The prevalence of smoking in China — with more than 300 million adults who either smoke or are exposed to smoke at work or at home — means hundreds of millions of adults eventually may face tobacco-related health problems. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in China and worldwide, said Jiang He, chair of the epidemiology department at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine which helped conduct the study. China is in need of cessation programs and policies, such as smoking bans at work that reduce exposure to cigarette smoke.(Source: China Health, Nov 2004)