Marc Luber: Hey you guys - welcome to Careers Out There. I'm your host Marc Luber. Normally
here on this site we interview people from all kinds of career paths so that you can
hear right from the horse's mouth what it's like to be a PR person or an event planner
or a doctor or whatever kind of career. But today's a little something different. Today
is November 1st and this kicks off Lung Cancer Awareness Month. So why should you care about
lung cancer awareness month? And what does it have to do with careers? Well if you die
of lung cancer you're not gonna have much of a career! And another is I, as the host
of Careers Out There, lost my mom to lung cancer in the year 2002. So let me tell you
some things that you'll probably want to know about lung cancer. First, it's the number
1 cancer killer in America. Number one. We all hear about breast cancer and we hear about
prostate cancer, but the reality is that lung cancer kills more women than breast cancer
does - and it kills more men than prostate cancer does! 200,000 Americans EVERY YEAR
get lung cancer! And 150,000 of them die. Picture filling the Rose Bowl all the way
up with people and then having EVERYONE in it die! And then fill it again and have HALF
of the people there die! That's a LOT of people! It's not just a number when you think of it
that way. Now what can you do to prevent it? The first thing you can do is not smoke. 85%
of all lung cancers are caused by smoking. But 15% of lung cancer happens to people who
NEVER smoked before. Those people may be exposed to too much radon, secondhand smoke or have
a family history. What's radon? I didn't know what it is either - but it's a colorless,
odorless gas and it's formed by the natural decay of uranium that's in the rock, soil
and water around your home. The EPA has a website devoted to radon and I'll link to
it so that you can see how to test your home to make sure that you don't have too much
radon and you're not exposed to enough to give you cancer. Let's go back to the smoking.
I don't want to tell people what to do with their lives, but let me give you some statistics
about smoking because you'll probably find this interesting. 10-15% of smokers are going
to get lung cancer. In addition to lung cancer, the overall deaths from smoking in America
every year: 438,000. That's filling the Rose Bowl more than FOUR times and having everybody
die! Just THINK about that! Smoking also causes this list of fun activities: heart attacks,
strokes, mouth cancer, cancer of the larynx, esophagus, bladder, stomach, kidney, pancreas
and some forms of leukemia - and I'm sure there's others that I didn't even get to.
So that's something to keep in mind! 40,000 of those people are secondhand smokers. That
means they're not even smokers - they're just stuck sitting near other people who smoke.
And here's an interesting statistic, since a lot of people who watch Careers Out There
are students: 90% of people who are smokers start before the age of 18. Let me show you
this pack of cigarettes from Ireland, where there's probably less lobbyists than in America.
"Smoking Kills" - that's on the pack of cigarettes! Here "Smoking Can Cause A Slow And Painful
Death". My mom died in 2002 of lung cancer. She got it at the age of 57. Even though 57
or 58 might sound kind of old to you right now if you're in high school or college, just
think that it's 1/3 of your life - and it robbed me of 1/3 of my life of having a mom!
I don't want any of you to have to go through this with your parents and I don't want you
to have to have your future children go through it with you! So that's one of the reasons
we're sharing this information today - so that you can know all of these realities of
the number one cancer killer. Here's something else to know: most x-smokers will tell you
that it took multiple tries to quit smoking. So if you've been trying to quit and you just
haven't had any luck yet, keep trying! Why is it so hard? Smoking has nicotine in it.
Nicotine is an incredibly addictive drug. They don't tell you that - they don't warn
you of that! Many drug counselors will tell you that it's easier for many of their patients
to quit heroin than it is to quit cigarette smoke! And the sooner you quit, the sooner
you reduce your risk for getting cancer in the future. 15% of all lung cancers do occur
in people who already quit smoking. So you're putting yourself at risk the second you start
smoking. So your best bet is to never even touch the stuff. All of this ties into the
fact that we need more support for lung cancer research, we need more awareness of what causes
lung cancer so we can avoid it and not get it and smokers need to be aware of the secondhand
smoke issues so that they're not poisoning the people around them. Anyways, that's it
- I just wanted to inform you guys so you know about the number one cancer killer, how
you can prevent it, how you can avoid it and make sure to know that you can donate to causes
like the Lung Cancer Foundation of America. Normally on Careers Out There, in case you've
never seen it before, we interview people from all kinds of career paths and they share
information with us like a typical day, what it's like to be on a career path like theirs,
how did they break into that career path and how you can do it too. That's it - thanks
again for watching everybody. I'm Marc Luber and look forward to seeing you soon. Take
care.
http://careersoutthere.com
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