Smokers who puff on just ONE fag a day are still ‘at greater risk of early death’
Even those people who smoke very little are at increased risk of the negative health effects of tobacco, experts warned
THERE is no safe level of smoking, experts warned today.
Even puffing on one fag a day can increase a smoker's risk of early death, they said.
Smoking is a public health issue across the world, with tobacco estimated to cause five million deaths each year.
Yet, there is very little research on the effects of long-term, low-intensity smoking.
Nor have many studies explored the perception that very irregular smoking can be safe.
Dr Maki Inoue-Choi, from the National Cancer Institute in the US, and her team focused specifically on people who smoke fewer than one or one to 10 fags a day.
And they compared their risk of early death with current and former smokers.
They looked at a total of 290,215 adults, aged between 59 and 82, who had filled out a smoking questionnaire.
The group included 22,337 current smokers, 156,405 former smokers, and 111,473 never smokers.
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Low-intensity smokers - who had puffed on less than 10 cigarettes a day - were found to have a higher risk of early death from all causes than those who had never smoked.
Links were found with all smoking-related causes of death - particularly lung cancer.
Former smokers who had been low-intensity smokers, had progressively lower risk of death the younger they were when they quit, the researchers noted.
The authors concluded: "These findings provide further evidence that there is no safe level of cigarette smoking.
"All smokers should be targeted for smoking cessation, regardless of how few cigarettes the smoke per day."
They said more research is needed to determine the health risks linked with low-intensity cigarette smoking and electronic nicotine devices and other tobacco products.
The findings are published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.