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Show Keeping Up ifil science Service. WNU Scrwce. Soot in City Air Seen as Possible Cause of Cancer Tarry Deposits Injure Urban Dwellers' Lungs NEW YORK. Soot-laden city air may be causing cancer of the lungs in the inhabitants of cities. Conclusive evidence for this is lacking, but strong circumstantial evidence is brought forward by Dr. M. G. Seelig and E. L. Benignus of the Barnard Free Skin and Cancer Can-cer hospital, St. Louis, in a report re-port to the American Journal of Cancer published here. Human death records and animal studies furnish the evidence with which the St. Louis scientists pin the guilt of causing cancer onto soot in the city air. Figures from the United States Census bureau show that lung cancer can-cer deaths are more numerous in cities than in rural areas. Soot Versus Death. The relation between the greater number of deaths and the greater amount of sootin the air is close enough, the scientists state, "to warrant war-rant more activity on the part of public health authorities in the various va-rious anti-smoke campaigns." The tar in soot and the way soot invades all the structures of the lungs make it capable of causing cancer. Tar itself has long been recognized as a can"er-causing substance. sub-stance. Chimney sweeps' cancer has been traced to the iiritation produced by tar encountered in the course of this occupation. Tar painted onto the skin of mice causes cancer. Whether or not tar, breathed into the lungs with sooty air, could cause cancer, as the death statistics suggest, sug-gest, was the problem the St. Louis scientists set out to solve. Tests on Mice. For mice apparently it can and does, which strengthens the assumption assump-tion that it does also in the case of man. In a group of mice that lived in a sooty atmosphere over a long period pe-riod of time, eight out of a hundred hun-dred developed lung cancer. By contrast, two out of a hundred developed de-veloped lung cancer in a group that lived in a soot-free atmosphere. |