Cancer of the lung among Mexican immigrant women in California

The surviving members of families were interviewed about the smoking histories of 113 Mexican-American women who had died of lung cancer during the years 1950 through 1962. The frequency of starting to smoke at a very early age was greater among the immigrants from Mexico than among Mexican-Americans born in the United States. A sample of 959 Mexican-American households in Los Angeles County was then studied in 1963–64 and female smoking histories compared with those derived from a 1960–61 California Health Survey. The major differences between Mexican immigrant women and Californian women generally were at ages 65 and over: a larger proportion of the immigrant women were cigarette smokers and a much larger proportion (13.1% vs. 0.1%) had begun smoking before age 15. This was not true of younger women ages 25–44. The excess lung cancer risk among Mexican immigrant women was reduced from about 3-fold during 1949–53 to about 2-fold during 1958–62. The age distribution of rates showed a peak at ages 65–74 in 1949–53 and at ages 75 and more in 1958–62. This suggests the excess risk is limited mainly to those women who spent youth and childhood in Mexico prior to about 1920 and is consistent with the unusual smoking histories of older immigrant women. The smoking histories and the lung cancer experience of Mexican immigrant women are tending toward the levels for the California female population. It was not possible however, to demonstrate that all of the excess lung cancer risk was due to cigarette smoking.