Part 3. Lifestyle and environmental factors versus cancers.

Keywords. factors, control, cancer cases, list of causes, life style and environmental exposures, best option.

Vocabulary. bladder, cervix, pancreas, digestive tract, speculate.

A. You're going to hear a report about the relationship between cancers and lifestyle & environmental factors.

Listen to the first part of the report, write down the name of the preventable cancers and the risk factors that cause cancer.

U.S, Australian and New Zealand scientists report in the journal Lancet

that nine factors that people in societies can control cause nearly 2.5 million cancer cases each year.

That is about one third of the 7 million annual globe total.

These include cancers of the lung, breast, bladder, cervix, liver, pancreas, mouth and digestive tract.

Leading the lists of causes is smoking, which the researchers say is responsible for 20% of preventable cancers.

Alcohol use and low consumption of fruits and vegetables cause another 5% each.

Also significant are overweight and obesity, physical inactivity, urban air pollution,

indoor smoke from household cooking, contaminated injections in health clinics and unsafe sex.

B. Now listen to the whole report, focus on the findings and suggestions made by scientists.

Complete the exercises.

US, Australian and New Zealand scientists report in the journal Lancet

that nine factors that people in societies can control cause nearly 2.5 million cancer cases each year.

That is about one third of 7 million annual globe total.

These include cancers of the lung, breast, bladder, cervix, liver, pancreas, mouth and digestive tract.

Leading the list of causes is smoking, which the researcher say is responsible for 20% of preventable cancers.

Alcohol use and low consumption of fruits and vegetables cause another 5% each.

Also significant are overweight and obesity, physical inactivity, urban air pollution,

indoor smoke for household cooking, contaminated injections in health clinic and unsafe sex.

One of the study's co-authors, Harvard University public heath researcher Majid Ezzati, says the statistics reflect data on cancer deaths in 2001.

He expects an increase in the proportion of deaths from these risk factors.

"The estimates that we have are looking at what happens today as a result of past exposure.

So one third of cancer deaths today would have been avoided had these lifestyle and environmental exposures not been present.

If we were to speculate about the future, we could actually say more than one in every three cancer deaths could be avoided

because things such as smoking actually have been going up in many countries in the world.

So we actually haven't seen the full effects of it yet."

The news study finds that developing countries had more than twice as many preventable cancer death as rich nations.

Among the developing regions, Eastern Europe and Central Asia had the highest proportion of cancer death attributable to the nine risk factors, 39% compared to the globe average of 35%.

Furthermore, Mr Ezzati says twice as many men as women died from such cancers.

Mr Ezzati and his colleagues say that the best option for reducing the increasing global burden of cancer is through lifestyle and environmental modifications.

Because medical science is not close to controlling it.

Despite the drive to seek cancer cures, they point out that advances in treatment have not been as effective as for other chronic diseases.

And effective screening methods are available for only a few cancers.

"There is a huge amount of resources going in to the war on cancer and to biomedical technologies.

It's certainly not matched by equivalent research and application of risk factor reduction.

So I think this should be a reminder of how large the role of prevention can be for reducing cancer deaths."