alt.energy.renewable

Cigarette smoking cuts 10 years off average lifespan
Journal of Employee Assistance, The, Sept, 2004
50-year study of nearly 35,000 British doctors who smoke cigarettes has
found that those who smoke their entire adult lives will die, on average, 10
years before those who never smoke of who stop smoking by age 30.

The study, which began tracking the doctors in 1951, is the first to
quantity what scientists have long known--that cigarette smoking is deadly
and becomes more so the longer someone smokes. At age 70, 88 percent of
nonsmokers in the study were still alive, but only 71 percent of smokers. At
age 80, 65 percent of nonsmokers were alive, but only 32 percent of smokers.
Overall, about 6,000 of the doctors first studied in 1951 were still alive
in 2001

Just as the harm caused by cigarette smoking is dramatic, so, too, is the
benefit of stopping smoking. According to the study, a person who quits
smoking at age 60 will live, on average, three years longer than someone who
continues smoking, while a 40-year-old who stops will live nine years
longer. If a smoker quits by age 30, s/he can expect to live as long as
someone who never smoked.

The results of the study were published in the British Medical Journal 50
years to the day after the initial study appeared. According to the study
authors, about 77 percent of the doctors in the study group smoked in 1951,
roughly the same as the national average in Great Britain. Today, only about
20 percent of British adults smoke, the lowest rate in the developed world.