Science Saturday: Radioactive Edition (John Horgan & George Johnson)

[Bloggingheads]

Clarification from George Johnson

During my talk with John, I said how surprised I was to read that smoking increases one's risk of getting lung cancer by only about 8 percent. I misspoke. What I should have said is that the chance that a regular smoker will get lung cancer is roughly 8 percent. To be more precise, a study from Sloan-Kettering found that 10-year lung cancer risk for smokers varied "from 15% for a 68-year-old man who has smoked two packs per day for 50 years and continues to smoke, to 0.8% for a 51-year-old woman who smoked one pack per day for 28 years before quitting 9 years earlier." That's far lower than I ever would have guessed.