Cancer risk 'greater in deprived areas

The incidence and death rates from cancers linked to smoking or high alcohol consumption are three times higher in the most deprived areas of the UK than in the most affluent, according to research published today.

Deprived inner city areas in the north of England - including Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Teesside and Tyneside - and central Scotland - including Glasgow and Edinburgh - suffered the highest incidence of and death rates for lung, lip, mouth, voice box and throat cancers during the 1990s, the National Statistics office revealed today.

Rates for the same cancers were lower than average in the Midlands and the south of England, according to the Cancer Atlas of the UK and Ireland.

Dr Mike Quinn, co-author of the atlas, said: "It should be possible by reducing the rates everywhere to those in areas with among the lowest rates, to prevent or avoid 25,000 cases of cancer and 17,000 deaths each year.

"Places do not get cancer, people do. The reason areas have high rates of cancer is that people in them are exposed to the relative risk factors for those cancers."

The findings come as a coalition of doctors and campaigners warned that most of the 401 councils in England and Wales were doing little or nothing to encourage smoke-free workplaces in their area.

The Smokefree Action coalition, which includes the British Medical Association, Royal College of Physicians and Action on Smoking and Health, said few councils were still doing more than banning smoking in their own council offices.

Less than a quarter (99) of the councils surveyed, were actively encouraging smoke-free workplaces and taking action with the NHS to cut smoking rates.

But some of the cities with the highest smoking-related cancer rates, including Liverpool and Manchester, were at the forefront of anti-smoking policies, working towards public smoking bans.

The cancer atlas also revealed large scale variations in the incidence of cervical cancer with much higher than average rates in the West Midlands, the north of England and parts of Scotland.

There is a strong correlation between high rates of cervical cancer and living in deprived areas.