People’s average life expectancy, mortality rate of pregnant or maternity women and mortality rate of infants are the three indicators to evaluate residents’ health level of a certain country or region.

Beijing citizens' life expectancy was 80.27 years in 2008, only next to Shanghai’s figure of 81. To be specific, it was 78.46 for the male and 82.15 among the female, with the latter being 3.69 years more than the former. Statistics have shown that Beijing citizens' life expectancy increased 28 years gradually from 52 in 1949 to 80.27 in 2008 and has reached the level of developed countries.

According to an analysis report on the death of Beijing citizens in 2008, the year’s death toll was 70171, with the top five killers being malignant tumors, cardiovascular diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, respiratory diseases and injuries as well as toxicosis. Among the death cases, 17315 lives were taken by malignant tumors, which accounted for about 25% of the city’s total, thus continueing to be the number one reason for death in Beijing for a second consecutive year. While 5365 out of the above caused by malignant tumors were killed by lung cancer, which indicates that this disease is the top one reason for the death of our city, followed by liver cancer and intestinal cancer. In addition, the mortality rate of the male due to malignant tumors was higher than the female, and the rate among urban patients of lung cancer higher than that in rural areas.

Research shows that over the recent decade the morbidity rate of lung cancer has been on the rise in our city and the increase is mainly attributable to old citizens aged over 70, which has a bearing on the aging of population. Furthermore, smoking remains a key reason for the continued rise of both morbidity and mortality rates of lung cancer.

Lung cancer is a disease that results from multiple factors. Present research findings prove that the disease is related to smoking and air pollution. Therefore, as long as the following prevention efforts are made towards the above factors, people’s occurrence of the cancer can be reduced.

First, quit smoke. Medical researches have proved that smoking, including passive smoking has been a major cause for lung cancer, so quitting smoke has an obvious effect in reducing the morbidity of lung cancer, and generally it will be even greater after 20 to 30 years of refraining from smoking. Due to increasingly strict laws and regulations on smoking control, the male’s mortality rate of lung cancer has been kept stable or even on a downward track in the UK, US, Netherlands and other European and American countries. In view of that, we call upon citizens to reduce and even refrain from smoking for the sake of our health, and the youth and teenagers should be prohibited from smoking.

Second, efforts should be made to address the problem of air pollution for where there’s serious air pollution, the morbidity of lung cancer is rather high. Though 3, 4-benzopyrenes and other substances are major currently known carcinogens in the atmosphere, in big cities that are undergoing rapid urbanization and suffering from serious pollution, citizens absorb benzopyrene in an amount that may exceed that of 20 pieces of cigarette and this kind of chemical can intensify the carcinogenic effect of cigarette. So at the same time when the country is endeavoring to improve the atmosphere with various measures, we call upon citizens to adopt a traffic style featuring more walking and less driving so as to alleviate the atmosphere from being polluted by vehicle exhaust.

Moreover, indoor air pollution is also closely related to lung cancer. At present, indoor air pollutants that have been confirmed to be in close relation with the cancer mainly include 4 kinds of substances, i.e. second-hand smoke, cooking smoke as well as radon gas and benzene compounds in construction materials. In the event of poor indoor ventilation, harmful substances may accumulate to a very high concentration and become potential carcinogenic factors. As people spend most of their time indoors, it’s recommended that when cooking, citizens resort more to means like steaming and boiling instead of frying, and that they avoid frequent and harmful interior decoration.