 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: renjer
Date: 2010-04-06 14:45
Hi guys, my mum is sort of concerned about my new hobby, playing the clarinet. One of the cases she related to me was about this guy who used to play a reed, wind instrument in a band (she doesn't remember which) part time, about 3-4 times a week every night for several hours. He played from young (like about 20-30s) right up till the time he died (about 60s). Apparently he died from lung cancer.
So, in your opinion is overplaying the clarinet a really bad thing? Do you think that all the "exertion" that we put into the music will translate into lung cancer as we are overworking the lungs when we are taking in big breaths?
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Author: eac
Date: 2010-04-06 14:53
Absolutely not! I'm a radiologist, have seen plenty of lung cancers, and can assure you and your mother that clarinet playing will not cause lung cancer. Smoking yes but not playing a wind instrument. You are not overworking your lungs when you take a big breath; as a matteer of fact, I strongly believe that my father's relative good health despite his multiple medical problems (obesity/high blood pressure/diabetes) is is in large part because he keep his lungs open by playing the clarinet.
Liz Leckey
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2010-04-06 14:56
No. There is no correlation. Also your mother's friend could have gotten lung cancer from a lot of things. Smoking, work environment, foods, unhealthy diet, etc.
People get cancer for a lot of reasons, but I have never heard of any "music related" cancer.
Doctor Segal?
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Author: mrn
Date: 2010-04-06 15:40
skygardener wrote:
> People get cancer for a lot of reasons, but I have never heard
> of any "music related" cancer.
Playing in smoky bars where you inhale a lot of secondhand smoke could possibly give you lung cancer. But in that case, it's not the instrument, but rather the smoke that is the problem.
The OP should remind his mum that Stanley Drucker (principal clarinet of the NY Philharmonic) just retired....at age 80, after a 60+ year career. And he hardly looks a day over 65.
I'm not a doctor--I'm a lawyer--but I can provide a little professional anecdotal evidence for the health benefits of clarinet playing.  When I was in law school, I took a class in Federal Income Tax (in the U.S.A., of course). One of the cases we read about was about a kid whose dentist recommended he take up the clarinet in order to correct an overbite. The Internal Revenue Service let him deduct the cost of his clarinet lessons on his parents' tax return as a medical expense. So there you go...if the tax people will go for it, you know it must work....
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Author: Alseg
Date: 2010-04-06 17:16
skygardener intoned my name ......thus I respond.........
I performed many operations for lung cancer during my career as a surgeon. NONE were related to wind instrument playing. That is, of course, anecdotal.
Nevertheless......
I never read in any of my CME studies nor in Pathology texts about any correlation between playing a reed instrument and cancer of the lung or mouth.
That said, non-smokers can and do (rarely) get lung cancers, and some of them might have played reed instruments, but I know of no statistical correlation.
Naturally, if the player smokes or chews tobacco then the situation is totally different.
Recently someone posted the allegation that he developed a chronic illness by testing reeds (his occupation) that he alleges were grown with pesticides. I can not comment on that.
I do not know about synthetic reeds. I will ask Guy Legere to comment.
Former creator of CUSTOM CLARINET TUNING BARRELS by DR. ALLAN SEGAL
-Where the Sound Matters Most(tm)-
Post Edited (2010-04-06 18:11)
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2010-04-06 17:25
If anything, playing a wind instrument like a clarinet helps increase your lung capacity and helps develop stronger lungs. In the 48 years as a professional clarinetist I've never heard of anyone getting lung cancer from playing a wind instrument. ESP http://eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: jasperbay
Date: 2010-04-06 18:46
After reading your post, my mum seems like more of a 'saint' than ever.![[grin]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie5.gif)
Clark G. Sherwood
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Author: knotty
Date: 2010-04-06 19:29
I've never heard anything more silly. When I go cycling, I work the lungs far harder than playing the clarinet and I've never heard of a pro cyclist putting in 20,000 miles a year getting lung cancer.
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Author: BobD
Date: 2010-04-06 19:59
Might give your audience a headache, tho. Your Mom's story is a statistician's nightmare.
Bob Draznik
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Author: trice035
Date: 2010-04-06 23:07
Being an epidemiologist, I must chime in. There is nothing to suggest an association, causal or otherwise, between wind instruments and lung cancer.
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Author: reddog4063
Date: 2010-04-07 05:41
Playing may actually benefit your lungs and core muscles. It is a healthy hobby....unless you get gear acquisition syndrome!
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-04-07 13:07
I could tell a family anecdote about lung cancer and wind instruments, too. My uncle, who sang and played the trumpet professionally as a young man and semi-professionally later, died of lung cancer in his mid-60s. Oooooh. But I have to spoil that story by mentioning that, um, he also chain-smoked Camels. He kept an ashtray under his music stand so he could take regular drags while he practiced. If anything, huffing that junk out of his lungs and getting the deep-breathing exercise may have kept him alive longer than he would have lived without the music.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: JJAlbrecht
Date: 2010-04-07 17:54
If this were true, most of would be confined to respriatroy wards with stage 5 cancers, wouldn't it?
Utter nonsense!
There is no correlation between playing wind instruments and cancers of the respiratory tract, that i have ever read about. I suppose the clarinet Mafia could be hiding or massaging data like the "global warming" types have been, but I doubt that's the case.
There *might* be a statistical correlation between trumpet playing and lower IQ, but even there, there is no proof of causality! ![[rotate]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smiley25.gif)
Jeff
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Author: Alseg
Date: 2010-04-07 19:13
Just to be complete, here is our reply from Legere about synthetics (their synthetic, at least):
Hi Allan,
Thanks for the heads up. We don't normally comment on the bulletin boards, but I am happy to report that Legere reeds are made from a pure food-grade polypropylene with no added fibers or fillers. Our material is completely non-toxic. We have some more details posted on our website at
http://www.legere.com/index.php?page=materials
Please feel free to pass this along to the bulletin board if you feel it is of interest.
Mark
Legere Reeds Ltd.
Former creator of CUSTOM CLARINET TUNING BARRELS by DR. ALLAN SEGAL
-Where the Sound Matters Most(tm)-
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Author: Nessie1
Date: 2010-04-08 07:45
I don't know whether any of the other british contributors will remember the story of Roy Castle (a much-loved all-round entertainer, who I incidentally did share a stage with at a pantomime when I was about 7). He died of lung cancer aged about 59, I think, and the doctors said that it was a type which they would never usually see in a non-smoker (which Castle was). The only thing they could put it down to was all the time he had spent playing the trumpet in smoky bars and clubs. These days, in the UK, such places would be non-smoking.
I would therefore support the suggestions that playing a wind instrument would have no impact at all on the likelihood of getting lung cancer but smoking or playing in a smoky atmosphere would!
Vanessa.
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Author: mrn
Date: 2010-04-08 15:21
The evidence linking secondhand smoke to lung cancer is pretty strong. See this article from Wikipedia (which contains citations to numerous studies on this subject):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_smoking
Moreover, studies relating to the connection between public smoking bans and decreased incidence of heart attack cases appear to suggest that it is precisely those in the hospitality and entertainment industries that most affected (because they work in smoky restaurants and bars):
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/22/moh.healthmag.smoking.heart/
They have the right idea in the UK. We have similar bans in the US at state and local levels (there is no nationwide ban yet). Most major metropolitan areas in my state (Texas), for instance, have enacted some kind of ban on public smoking. In my town, there are even restrictions on where you can smoke outdoors in public.
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Author: hhuey1
Date: 2010-04-09 19:49
Your mum is obviously worried about something personal that you have not revealed.
My mother was worried about my taking up trumpet due to childhood asthma when I was 9 years old. She told me that my uncle died from lung cancer playing trumpet. She later did acknowledge that he chain smoked at least two packs a day.
Well, I took up clarinet instead and never looked back. Perhaps, you can ask your mum what she is really worried about.
Herb
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2010-04-09 22:54
I'm just glad smoking has been banned in public buildings as since I started playing saxes in bands in pubs and clubs from the age of 15 I'd be breathing all that smoke in. And at 15 I was too young to go and buy cigarettes, though it was never an illegal thing to passive smoke no matter if I wanted to or not.
I've always been a non-smoker having uncles, aunts and a granddad up in Scotland that smoked heavily probably put me off that from a young age (not to mention experimenting with smoking at school and inhaling it which felt like it burned all the way down and the resulting headache), and breathing other people's smoke is not my idea of fun - especially on a gig, not to mention getting stingy eyes and stinking like an ashtray at the end of an evening.
My mum was always concerned with this since the news of Roy Castle's death, but now with the smoking ban in all enclosed public places we can all breathe clean air again.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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Author: renjer
Date: 2010-04-10 00:12
I guess the whole issue here is about the smoke inside the bars and since he's playing a wind instrument he needs to take a bigger breath. Probably why my mum's friend got lung cancer in the first place.
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