Dr. Garrett Wdowin, Chandler, AZ
A new study in cancer research from the UK’s Health Behaviour Research Centre, published in Addiction Biology has attempted to address the common thought by smokers that roll-your-own (RYO) cigarettes aren’t as bad as ready-made (manufactured) cigarettes.
In the first study of its kind researchers compared 127 urine samples of smokers who used ready-made cigarettes with 28 samples from RYO cigarette smokers to check the levels of two known cancer-causing chemicals.
Finding showed there were no differences in the concentrations of the toxins between manufactured and RYO cigarette smokers even when age, sex, body mass index, puffing behavior and nicotine exposure were taken into account. Alarmingly, women had higher concentrations of these toxins irrespective of the cigarette type smoked.
Lead researcher Dr Lion Shahab, from Cancer Research UK’s Health Behavior Research Centre based at UCL, said: ”These findings also show that women in particular accumulate higher concentrations of cancer causing chemicals in their body whether they smoke RYO or manufactured cigarettes.”
Elspeth Lee, Cancer Research UK’s head of tobacco control, said: “These results further highlight that there’s no such thing as a safe cigarette. Hand rolled tobacco is more commonly used by people from lower socio-economic groups, and it is also in poorer communities that smoking rates are highest. It’s important that people know that using hand-rolled tobacco may be cheaper but is every bit as toxic as readymade cigarettes.”
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Tags: cigarettes, homemade cigarettes, roll-your-own cigarettes
