Feeling safe for smoking one or a few cigarettes in a week? Think again. A new study has found that social smoking or smoking occasionally is just as deadly and the risk of death is the same, regardless how many you smoke in a day.
Researchers from the U.S. National Cancer Institute have determined that those who consistently smoked of an average of less than a single cigarette for every day during their lifetime are 64 percent more likely to die earlier than those who never smoked a cigarette in their life.
Those who smoke one to ten cigarettes a day were found to be 87 percent more likely to die early than those who never lit up.
According to the lead author of the study, Maki Inoue-Choi from the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, the result of this study proves that there is no safe level of smoking or exposure to tobacco smoke.
During the study, researchers examined 290,000 adult cases ranging from ages 59 to 82 based on a national survey. The team asked participants about their smoking habits during nine different periods in their lifetime, from their 15th birthday to the 70th.
The researchers revealed that the major cause of death was linked to smoking and lung cancer. Based on the study, those who smoked less than one cigarette per day during their entire lives are nine times at risk of dying due to lung cancer than those who never lit a cigarette.
Those who smoked between one to 10 cigarettes a day are 12 times more susceptible to lung cancer-related deaths than non-smokers. They are also six times more likely to die from respiratory diseases and have one and half times higher chances of dying from cardiovascular disease.
However, the study included some limitations, such as the participants were mostly white and in their 60s and 70s. Future studies are needed to examine younger populations and various racial and ethnic backgrounds to learn more about low-intensity smoking.
This new study was published in the journal, JAMA Internal Medicine.