Cancers attributable to tobacco smoking in France in 2015

The evidence on the carcinogenicity of tobacco smoking has been well established. An assessment of the population-attributable fraction (PAF) of cancer due to smoking is needed for France, given its high smoking prevalence.

We extracted age- and sex-specific national estimates of population and cancer incidence for France, and incidence rates of lung cancer among never smokers and relative risk (RR) estimates of smoking for various cancers from the American Cancer Prevention Study (CPS II). For active smoking, we applied a modified indirect method to estimate the PAF for lung and other tobacco smoking-related cancer sites. Using the RR estimates for second-hand smoking, the proportion of never smokers living with an ever-smoking partner derived from survey, and marital status data, we then estimated the PAF for lung cancer attributable to domestic passive smoking.

Overall in France in 2015, 54 142 and 12 008 cancer cases in males and females, respectively, were attributable to active smoking, accounting for 28 and 8% of all cancer cases observed among adult (30+ years) males and females. Additionally, 36 and 142 lung cancer cases, respectively among male and female never smokers, were attributable to second-hand smoke resulting from their partner's active smoking, corresponding to 4.2 and 6.7% of lung cancer cases which occurred in never smoker males and females, respectively.

Tobacco smoking is responsible for a significant number of potentially avoidable cancer cases in France in 2015. More effective tobacco control programmes are critical to reduce this cancer burden.