Some things for people to think about regarding oral cancer risk and smokeless tobacco....
The number of annual deaths from oral cancer is 8,000 (13,500 including larynx cancer) in the U.S. (If you trust the Oral Cancer Foundation.)
Compare that to...
Heart disease: 597,689
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 138,080
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 129,476
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 120,859
Alzheimer's disease: 83,494
Diabetes: 69,071
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,476
Influenza and Pneumonia: 50,097
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 38,364
(According to the CDC.)
Highway Traffic Deaths 2011: 32,367
(According to NHTSA)
So, over 4 times the number of people die from driving on highways than the total number of all (tobacco and non-tobacco) mouth cancer deaths. Does that make you want to quit driving?
In 2010 there were 2,468,435 deaths in the U.S., so oral cancer (including larynx) was the cause of only 0.054% of total deaths. That's 1/2 of 1%. Compare that to heart disease (24%) and even diabetes (3%). Your diet is far more likely to kill you with a heart attack than smoking or ST use with oral cancer!
The estimated number of adult smokeless tobacco users in the U.S. is 7,495,828 (3.3% of adults.) According to the ACS, at least 50% of oral cancers today (not including larynx) are caused by HPV (some studies say it's as high as 72%). So, the number of oral cancers linked to tobacco use (including smoking) would have to be 50% or less. If there are 45 million smokers and roughly 7.5 million ST users, there are 6-times as many smokers at risk for oral cancer. Therefore, 4,000 oral cancer deaths would mean roughly 667 ST oral cancer deaths and 3,333 smoking oral cancer deaths (if you ignore studies that show smokers are twice as likely to get oral cancer.) That means less than 0.001% of ST users die every year from oral cancer. Does this give you a better idea of how RARE it is for ST users to die from oral cancer? If you were told that 0.001% of people die from a certain cancer from eating your favorite food, would that really make you afraid of eating it? What if they also told you they didn't know for certain if eating that food actually caused cancer, but that 50% the people who got this cancer also ate that particular food, so they believe there is a link?
That's another thing people don't realize. Scientists have no idea how tobacco causes cancer, they just know that a higher number of people with the cancer are also tobacco users. However, they don't normally eliminate other factors that can cause cancer, such as HPV, diet, alcohol, genetics and environment when they list cause of death. "The decedent died from oral cancer and used ST? Write ST use down as cause of death. Next." But there is a big difference between a known cause and correlation data (X causes Y vs. X and Y are both present.)
As far as TSNAs - there has been no conclusive evidence to prove TSNAs are actually the CAUSE of cancer (again - they haven't yet figured out HOW smoking causes cancer, they only have found higher cancer rates in people who also smoke) and therefore, there is no evidence that lower TSNAs reduce cancer risk.
The risk of cancer from ST is so low that if you had that same risk from a lot of other things people enjoyed, most people wouldn't consider it a risk worth worrying about. There is no such thing as "zero risk." Most people would think a 1% increased risk isn't anything to really worry about - because there's a 99% chance you WON'T get sick and die from it. So, why avoid a product over worrying about a disease that only 0.001% of users die from?
