Risks of Bladder Cancer

Risk factors include:
Increasing age. Your risk of bladder cancer increases as you age.
Being white. Whites have a greater risk of bladder cancer than do people of other races.
Smoking. Smoking cigarettes, cigars or pipes may increase your risk of bladder cancer by causing harmful chemicals to accumulate in your urine. When you smoke, your body processes the chemicals in the smoke and excretes some of them in your urine.
The two main risk factors for bladder cancer are smoking and exposure to chemicals at work. Your risk if you smoke is up to 6 times higher than a non smoker. Chemicals in cigarette smoke get into the bloodstream and end up in the urine. This brings them into contact with the bladder. Chemicals used in some industries can also cause bladder cancer. Most have been banned in the UK for about 20 years, but you may have been exposed to them in the past.
Researchers have long considered smoking a risk factor for bladder cancer, a disease that strikes about 55,000 Americans each year. But the results of a new study published in the January 2001 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health suggest that risk may be far higher than previously thought. The same study, however, indicates that coffee may protect against bladder cancer, especially among smokers. Analyzing data from 500 diagnosed cases of bladder cancer, as well as 1,000 control subjects, the researchers found that non-coffee drinking smokers were seven times more likely to develop the disease as non-smokers.