Smoking reduces women’s life expectancy in America
For the first time in 90 years – since the devastating Spanish influenza epidemic – life expectancy is falling for a large number of American women with about 12% of the population having an expectancy lower than it was in the early 1980s.
The trend is blamed on increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema, and kidney failure apparently reflecting the long-term consequences of smoking and the slowing of the general decline in heart disease deaths.
The downward trend is strongest in counties in the deep South, Appalachia, Maine, and the lower Midwest. It is most common in rural and lower-income areas with the most dramatic change occuring in south-western Virginia where women’s life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.
The leader of the study, Christopher Murray, of the University of Washington, said “I think this is a harbinger (warning sign). This is not going to be isolated to this set of counties, is my guess”.
