Click on banner!Smoking Cigars Just as Dangerous as Smoking Cigarettes
Click on banner!Smoking Cigars Just as Dangerous as Smoking Cigarettes
Cigar Risks
Correspondent Report
By Walter Wisniewski
Washington
April 11, 1998
Introduction
Scientists in the United States say smoking cigars is just as dangerous as smoking cigarettes. A new report on the health risks of smoking warns that cigars can cause cancer, heart and lung disease. More on this from VOA's Walter Wisniewski (vish-nyeff'-skee).
Text
The National Cancer Institute says cigar smoking in the United States is up 50-percent over the past five years. Many of these smokers are believed to be people switching from cigarettes to cigars, hoping to avoid the well-known health risks associated with cigarettes.
The researchers say this is disturbing, because cigar smoke carries a far higher concentration of dangerous, cancer- causing chemicals.
Compared to a cigarette, one cigar has 20 times as much ammonia, and five to 10-times more cadmium. Both of these are cancer-causing chemicals. The statistical evidence is even worsefor other specific compounds that trigger cancer in humans (carcinogens).
Tobacco used in cigars is aged and fermented, which increases its concentration of nitrate compounds. The burning process also is different, putting more toxic chemicals into cigar smoke.
The Cancer Institute -- part of the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health -- calls daily cigar smoking a significant health risk. Researchers say cigars cause a wide variety of cancers of the throat, mouth and lungs, as well as heart disease.
There also is evidence that cigar smoking is linked to cancer of the pancreas. Many of these cancers have an extremely low survival rate.
The National Cancer Institute's director, Doctor Richard
klausner, has simple advice for people who are thinking about smoking cigars -- don't do it.
The only way for smokers to eliminate their risk of cancer, heart disease and lung disease, Doctor Klausner says, is to quit smoking completely. (Signed) neb/wtw/jo
11-April-1998 8:59 a.m. EDT (1259 UTC) nnnn
Report 2-229520
Source - Voice of AmericaVisit the National Cancer Institute
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