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Smoking increases the risk of developing bladder cancer fourfold
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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Smoking has long been known to cause a wide range of cancers. New data show that the habit is responsible for about half of bladder cancers in both men and women. That's more than previously thought.
Every year, more than 350,000 people worldwide are diagnosed with bladder cancer.
In 2009, the results of a study conducted on smokers in New Hampshire were published. They attracted the attention of Neil Friedman, a scientist at the US National Cancer Institute. He and his colleagues noted an unusually high number of bladder cancer cases among the study participants.
Friedman's group conducted an additional analysis, examining data collected from half a million people participating in the National Institutes of Health's Diet and Health Study. Participants in the long-term study were aged 50 to 71 when it began in 1995.
When Friedman compared the original data with the results obtained in 2006, he found that 4,500 people had been diagnosed with bladder cancer during that time.
"Our study showed that current smokers are four times more likely to develop bladder cancer than non-smokers," he says. "That's higher than in previous studies done in the 1960s and 1980s."
Back then, smokers were only three times more likely to develop cancer than those who abstained from tobacco.
“Another interesting thing we found is that in both men and women, smoking is associated with about half of all bladder cancers,” Friedman adds. “Previous studies were done at a time when women smoked less than men. And then smoking might be responsible for about half of the cancers in men, but only 20 to 30 percent of the cancers in women.”
Friedman notes that the composition of cigarettes has changed over the past half-century. Although the tar and nicotine content has decreased, the content of a number of other carcinogens, including beta-naphthalene, appears to have increased, possibly linked to bladder cancer. In addition, a new study has concluded that former smokers are also at increased risk of developing this dangerous disease. The article with the results of the study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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