ALBANY — The Big Apple is a low-cancer zone.
The American Cancer Society of New York and New Jersey found lower cancer rates in the city than in the rest of the state and nation, driven by significantly lower lung-cancer rates.
“We attribute that to the decades-long efforts by a series of New York City administrations — Giuliani, Bloomberg and the City Council — to enact tough anti-smoking campaigns,” said the society’s director of advocacy, Blair Horner. “We think this is evidence that those efforts are paying off.”
Mayor Bloomberg’s Health Department claimed city smoking rates are at “an all-time low of 14 percent among adults, reducing needless suffering and death from preventable illnesses such as cancer.”
Horner said the society’s report, released yesterday, “should be a clear message to policy makers to educate the public, and children in particular, on the dangers of smoking.”
He said the city does a better job of that than the state.
According to the cancer society, the death rate due to cancer in New York City from 2004 to 2008 was 183.3 per 100,000 for men and 130.9 per 100,000 for women. Across the rest of the state, the cancer death rate was 214.3 per 100,000 for men and 156.6 per 100,000 for women.