Monday, January 17, 2005
Betel is bad news
When Mark linked to David-Michel Davies' blog post about his paan experience in India, a bunch of readers wrote in to warn us of the danger of cancer associated with betel treats. The new issue of Science News has a feature article about that very thing. Recent studies have linked betel chewing to oral cancer. Meanwhile, the habit is rising in popularity.
"Aggressive advertising, targeted at the middle class and adolescents since the early 1980s, has largely enhanced the sales," notes Beatrice Secretan, a health researcher who contributed to the 300-page Monograph on Betel-quid and Areca-nut Chewing published in October 2004 by WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer, based in Lyon, France.Link
"The situation," she says, "is similar to the real start of the tobacco epidemic, with industrially manufactured cigarettes, at the beginning of the 20th century."
posted by David Pescovitz at 06:33:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments
