Letter to the Editor: Cancer rates not explained by smoking: how to investigate a single county.

The ranking of Allegheny County in the bottom 2 % of SEER counties with regard to the benefit of tobacco control for lung cancer raises a red flag about past and ongoing exposures that may increase cancer risk. Using U.S. Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) cancer incidence and population data for 612 counties [[2]], we simulated the expected effect of eliminating smoking on the rates of 12 types of cancer known to be caused by smoking [[3]]. [Extracted from the article]