One cigarette is enough
There is no safe smoking intensity
Anna Stavina, XX2 century, based on EurekAlert! – No safe level of smoking
People who regularly smoke less than one cigarette a day have a 64% increased risk of dying earlier than non-smokers. Those who smoke an average of 1 to 10 cigarettes a day increase this risk by 87%. These conclusions were reached by the authors of a new study from the National Cancer Institute of the USA (National Cancer Institute). The risks for those who smoked relatively few cigarettes in the past, but do not smoke now, were lower than for smokers. In addition, a more pronounced reduction in risks was associated with early quitting smoking.
The results of the study were published on December 5 in JAMA Internal Medicine (Inoue-Choi et al., Association of Long-term, Low-Intensity Smoking With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in the National Institutes of Health–AARP Diet and Health Study).
When scientists looked at the individual causes of death of the study participants, the association with death from lung cancer was the most pronounced. Those who smoked less than one cigarette a day, as it turned out, were characterized by a 9 times greater risk of dying from lung cancer than those who had never smoked. In people who smoke from 1 to 10 cigarettes, this risk was increased by 12 times compared to non-smokers.
The researchers also compared the risks of death from diseases of the respiratory system, for example, emphysema, and from cardiovascular diseases. Among those who smoked from 1 to 10 cigarettes, these risks were increased by 6 and 1.5 times, respectively.
"The results of the work confirm the warnings stating that there is no safe smoking intensity," said Maki Inoue–Choi, lead author of the study, an employee of the Department of Epidemiology and Genetics of Oncological Diseases of the National Institute of Oncology. "The observations made demonstrate that smoking even a small number of cigarettes a day has a negative impact on health, and prove that quitting smoking is beneficial to all smokers, regardless of how much they smoke."
Smoking is characterized by a number of negative health consequences. Since the US Secretary of Health in 1964 announced the link between smoking and lung cancer, the harmful effects of this habit have been studied in detail in numerous studies. However, the effect of regular but low-intensity smoking on health has never been specifically studied, so many people who smoke a little believe that they do not harm their body.
To better understand the impact of moderate smoking on the structure of mortality from all possible causes, scientists analyzed data collected during a nutrition and health study conducted by the National Institutes of Health (National Institutes of Health) in conjunction with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). The study covered 290 thousand people, "low-intensity smoking" was defined as smoking 10 or less cigarettes a day. The age of the participants at the start of the work ranged from 59 to 82 years.
The participants were interviewed by asking questions about smoking during 9 periods of life, starting from adolescence (up to 15 years) and ending with the elderly (up to 70 years in elderly respondents). Among those who continued to smoke at the time of the survey, 159 people reported that they smoked on average less than one cigarette a day during the years that they smoked. Approximately 1,500 participants responded that they smoked from 1 to 10 cigarettes.
The study was based on the memories of the interviewees' decades of life, which introduced some uncertainty into the results of the work. Also, despite the impressive total number of participants, the number of those whose habits fell under the definition of "low-intensity smoking" turned out to be relatively small.
Another limitation of the work was that the majority of respondents belonged to the white race and were between the ages of 60 and 80. Thus, the observations made during the work describe only the smoking characteristics of some Americans of a certain age. Additional research is needed, which will involve younger respondents, as well as representatives of other racial and ethnic groups. The latter is especially important, since "low-intensity smoking" in the United States has historically been common among national and ethnic minorities. In addition, the study lacked detailed information about the intensity of smoking among those who smoked less than one cigarette a day, so scientists could not compare the effects of tobacco on those who smoked every other day and those who, for example, limited themselves to a cigarette a week.
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06.12.2016