September 30, 2005 – The myth that smoking two or three cigarettes a day is not really bad for your health has just gone up in smoke.
Norwegian researchers have just established that men who smoke one to four cigarettes a day are three times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than non-smokers. Their risk of succumbing to lung cancer is also three times higher, while in women, the same risk is multiplied by five.
Death rates are 1.5 times higher in light smokers than in non-smokers, regardless of the cause of death.
These conclusions, published in the current edition of the journal Tobacco Control, come from a study1 carried out for nearly 30 years with around 43,000 men and women.
Other studies had already established that smoking said “light” increased the risk of death. But this new survey is distinguished by its definition of a light smoker. So far, scientific studies have established that a light smoker consumes one to nine cigarettes per day.
This allowed researchers to find that the most dramatic increase in health risks is between one and four cigarettes per day. These results could have a perverse effect: encourage some smokers to smoke even more, if the health impact of eight cigarettes a day is barely greater than that of four cigarettes.
However, the study has weaknesses. Thus, the researchers only used reported smoking at the very start of the study, without monitoring it. It is therefore impossible to know whether those who, for example, claimed to smoke one to four cigarettes per day were new smokers who then increased their consumption, or long-term smokers who had reduced their consumption.
Jean-Benoit Legault – PasseportSanté.net
According to Reuters Health.
1. Bjartveit K, Tverdal A. Health consequences of smoking 1-4 cigarettes per day. 1: Tobacco Control. 2005 Oct; 14 (5): 315-20. The study is available in full at this address: http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/14/5/315 [Consultée le 30 septembre 2005]