No safe level of smoking: Study

Oslo, Sep 22: Chain smokers risk developing heart disease, but a new study has revealed that those who smoke just one to four cigarettes a day also face a similar threat.
Kjell Bjartveit of the National Health Screening Service in Norway's capital, Oslo, and other researchers tracked the health and death rates of almost 43,000 men and women from the mid 1970s up to 2002.

Compared with those who had never smoked, the men and women who smoked between one and four cigarettes a day were almost three times as likely to die of coronary artery disease, it was found, reports the online edition of BBC.

Among women, smoking one to four cigarettes daily increased the chance of dying from lung cancer almost five times.

Men who smoked this amount were almost three times as likely to be killed by lung cancer. There is no safe level of smoking, the study said.

So-called light smokers also had significantly higher death rates - 1.5 times higher generally - than those who had never smoked. Death rates from all causes rose as the number of cigarettes smoked every day increased.

The researchers believe their conclusions are accurate, even though they had to estimate the projected impact of smoking one to four cigarettes for five years in those light smokers who had smoked for less time.

A significant proportion of the light smokers had also increased their daily consumption over the period of the study. However, this had not exceeded nine cigarettes a day.

According to a study, 106,000 people die every year in Britain as a direct result of smoking. The only way to protect smokers from heart disease, cancer and other killer diseases is to quit completely, the researchers said.