The risk of acquiring lung cancer has been associated with ethnicity. According Dr. Christopher Haiman, study author and assistant professor at the University of Southern California, the chances of lung cancer depends on a person’s race. From 1993 to 2001, the clinical study evaluated 200,000 cigarette smokers. Approximately, ten percent of the participants or 1,979 developed lung cancer. A notable discrepancy was found in the ethnicity of the subjects who were eventually diagnosed with lung cancer.

A significant gap was seen amongst the volume of cigarettes smoked on a daily basis. For instance, amongst the participants who smoked less than a pack of cigarettes a day was heightened based on the nationality of the individual. A substantial difference was noted in races.
A close analysis of the disparity showed that low-to-moderate smokers who were either African American or Native Hawaiian had a higher risk of lung cancer than Caucasians who smoked the same number of cigarettes.

On the other side of the spectrum, Hispanics and Japanese Americans showed the lowest risk of lung cancer from habitual cigarette smoking. The findings were published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Despite the fact that African Americans smoked fewer daily cigarettes than Caucasians, a compelling aspect of the analysis showed that African Americans were more prone to a higher rate of lung cancer.

Additionally, both Japanese and Latino smokers showed a 79 percent lower rate of developing lung cancer than their African American counterparts and whites were 55 percent less susceptible than blacks. Dr. Haiman theorized that African Americans metabolize nicotine differently -- making them more vulnerable to cancer.

Based on smoking the same volume of cigarettes and on previous evaluations, blacks depicted higher levels of carcinogens in their bloodstream than other races (Caucasians or Hispanics). Moreover, the dietary discrepancies, the amount of nicotine inhalation and the type of cigarette smoked were other consideration attributed to the lung cancer rate in blacks.