Since its peak in the 1990s, the death rate of cancer has seen another year of decline, the American Cancer Society (ACS) reported in a news release.

The new study, published in the ACS' CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, cited data from 2010, the latest year available. Since 1991, cancer's death rate has dropped by a total of 20 percent.

In other words, 215.1 per 100,000 people had cancer in 1991 and now, in 2010, that figure has decreased to 171.8 per 100,000. Over the past two decades, an estimated 1,340,400 deaths by cancer have been avoided.

The largest amount of progress made was cancer's death rate among middle-aged black men. Since 1991, that figure has been cut in half for black males aged 40-49, who have been known to have the highest cancer death rate among all U.S. ethnic groups.

"The progress we are seeing is good, even remarkable, but we can and must do even better," ACS' CEO John R. Seffrin, PhD, said in the release. "The halving of the risk of cancer death among middle aged black men in just two decades is extraordinary, but it is immediately tempered by the knowledge that death rates are still higher among black men than white men for nearly every major cancer and for all cancers combined."

Dr. Georgia Sadler, associate director of community outreach at UC San Diego's Moores Cancer Center, told the San Diego Union-Tribune the reason for the initial high rate of cancer among black men and the sharp decline are both directly related to smoking.

"Programs were created in churches, in work sites, in public programs," Sadler said. "We've had programs in barber shops here in San Diego County, and we've succeeded in making the tobacco industry really be recognized as the death factory it really is."

Dr. Anthony D'Amico, chief of radiation oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, told HealthDay News he was encouraged to see cancer's death rate decline for the 10th year in a row.

"Something good is happening and I would attribute that to screening and better treatments," D'Amico said. "We have better treatments for men and women, so screening can only help."