Higher lung cancer rates in young women than young men: Tasmania, 1983 to 1992

Abstract

In a background of changing lung cancer rates in the past decade, mean incidence and mortality rates for persons aged 25–44 in Tasmania for the decade 1983 through 1992 were examined using Tasmanian Cancer Registry data. The smoking behavior of Tasmanian adults and schoolchildren was also investigated, using data from a social survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and from five secondary school smoking surveys. The Tasmanian age-standardized lung cancer incidence rates in 25–44 year olds for the 10-year period were 6.2 per 100,000 females and 3.3 per 100,000 males. Mean rates of incidence were higher for females than for males (P=0.02). The corresponding mortality rates were 4.2 in females and 2.4 in males (P=0.08). The prevalence of smoking by adult Tasmanian women is higher than that for other Australian women (P<0.05), and their duration of smoking is longer (P<0.01). Tasmanian schoolgirls have a higher smoking prevalence than Australian mainland schoolgirls (P=0.01) and higher prevalence than Tasmanian schoolboys (P=0.01). The data suggest that smoking prevalence among teenagers passed that for males only a decade before the observed excess of female incident cases among 25–44 year olds in Tasmania.