Up to a third of all oral cancer cases worldwide are linked to chewing, sucking and sniffing tobacco or betel nuts, a major study has found.
According to research published in Lancet Oncology, 120,000 people diagnosed with oral cancer in 2022 likely developed the condition because they consumed either smokeless tobacco such as snus (found in Nordic countries), naswar (popular in south Asia), and toombak (used in Sudan) – or addictive betel nuts, which grow on the areca palm.
“Smokeless tobacco and areca nut products are available to consumers in many different forms across the world, but consuming smokeless tobacco and areca nut is linked to multiple diseases, including oral cancer,” said Dr Harriet Rumgay, a scientist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the first author of the report.
“Our estimates highlight the burden these products pose on health care and the importance of prevention strategies to reduce consumption,” she added.
The researchers found that 95 per cent of oral cancer diagnoses linked to these products were in low and middle income countries in central, south and southeast Asia and the southwestern Pacific – where smokeless tobacco and the betel nut are most frequently used.
In particular, Papua New Guinea was badly hit, with 84 per cent of oral cancer diagnoses linked to betel nuts, according to the Lancet study. The paper is the first to include forms of the addictive nut which are not mixed with tobacco in an analysis of the drivers of oral cancer.
Users say the product – little known in the west, but regarded as the world’s fourth most widely-used psychoactive substance after caffeine, nicotine and alcohol – causes a mild, warming feeling of euphoria and alertness. It is this that makes it so popular in places like Papua New Guinea and worldwide – up to 600 million people use the substance in some form.
