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Teen smoking linked to breast cancer 

Girls who start smoking within five years of beginning menstruation could face a significantly higher risk of breast cancer later in life, according to a study released Thursday.

Researchers led by Quebec scientist Pierre Band of Health Canada, the country's federal health department, compared a group of women in British Columbia. They sent questionnaires and got replies from 318 breast cancer patients younger than 75 who were listed in a cancer registry between 1988 and 1989. They also heard from 340 women who did not have breast cancer.

Their analysis, reported in the Oct. 5 issue of the British journal The Lancet, showed the risk of breast cancer increased by approximately 70 percent among women who had been pregnant and who started to smoke within five years of the start of menstruation.

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