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Every Year of Smoking Causes About 150 New DNA Mutations That Can Make Cancer More Likely, Says Study (latimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: For every year that you continue your pack-a-day habit, the DNA in every cell in your lungs acquires about 150 new mutations. Some of those mutations may be harmless, but the more there are, the greater the risk that one or more of them will wind up causing cancer. The threat doesn't stop there, according to a study in Friday's edition of the journal Science. After a year of smoking a pack of cigarettes each day, the cells in the larynx pick up roughly 97 new mutations, those in the pharynx accumulate 39 new mutations, and cells in the oral cavity gain 23 new mutations. Even organs with no direct exposure to tobacco smoke appear to be affected. The researchers counted about 18 new mutations in every bladder cell and six new mutations in every liver cell for each "pack-year" that smokers smoked. The findings are based on a genetic analysis of 5,243 cancers, including 2,490 from smokers and 1,063 from patients who said they had never smoked tobacco cigarettes. The researchers used powerful supercomputers to compare thousands of cancer genome sequences. The computers grouped the sequences into about 20 distinct categories, or "mutational signatures." Mutations tied to five of these signatures were more common in tumors from smokers than in tumors from nonsmokers. One of the signatures involves a specific DNA nucleobase change -- instead of a C for cytosine, there was an A for adenine -- that "is very similar" to the change that occurs in the lab when cells are exposed to benzo[a]pyrene, a compound that the International Agency for Research on Cancer says is carcinogenic to humans. Most of the lung and larynx cancers obtained from smokers had this type of mutation, the researchers reported. They also found that the signature was more common among smokers than nonsmokers. Another mutational signature was characterized by Cs that should have been Ts (thymine) and vice versa. Although these changes can be found in all kinds of cancers, the signature was 1.3 to 5.1 times more common in tumors from smokers than in tumors from nonsmokers, according to the study.
Dipping tobacco causes cancer too. But people are dumb and don't realize how much it ruins their quality of life in addition to killing them.
It's way, way better for you than smoking. And for your family, too.
I wonder how cannabis compares. There is no way smoking small particulate matter of any kind is healthy, and while it isn't as carcinogenic as tobacco, I would be extremely surprised to see if it didn't have long term health effects on the lungs. Only time will tell.
anything
Now clearly im not saying smoking is healthy. But a pack a day is what most people around here would call extremely excessive
Smoke if you want to be a super hero.
The studies that have cured cancer.
This is why smoking should be illegal. It has no legitimate redeeming value, while causing massive costs due to health care, human losses, reduced quality of life, and a multitude of other problems. Furthermore, smokers should never be allowed to smoke around non-smokers without clear and direct consent. You don't have the right to cause me to develop cancer just because you have a disgusting habit. Any smoker who lights up around non-smokers without consent should be shot on the spot.
How can anyone smoke that many fags a day? That's two fags an hour? Too many fags.
Whaa?
Smoking is a breast-feeding fantasy: The cigarette is the nipple, the hand against your face is the breast, the smoke is the milk, and the most important part, the second-hand smoker is your mother. You can't breastfeed alone.
"The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide." - Kurt Vonnegut
"Here's the news: I am going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only twelve years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown & Williamson have promised to kill me. But I am eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon." - Kurt Vonnegut
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
and smoke the good stuff we do here: http://natsherman.com/
by switching to Oxycontin.
Which they don't? Not everyone is an addicted chain smoker TBQH. Not everyone even feels an addiction to nicotine.
...why we demonize smoking in the title .... while the primary source is clearly car usage (from the linked artilcle) FYI : i don't smoke.
Cuz she's a non-smoker but a blister on the butt of society, and the sooner she's gone the better off the world is.
Somebody please re-run these experiments specifically for marijuana. Somehow, pot-smokers have universally come to the conclusion that smoking burning cannabis leaves (without a filter) is not at all dangerous to them in any of the ways that smoking burning tobacco leaves (through a filter) is. I guarantee that the free radicals in cannabis smoke are every bit as dangerous as the free radicals in tobacco smoke.
How many mutation does a non smoker get during a year? The comparison would be interesting.
No one would argue that smoking is a health risk, but I find it oddly irrational that no research has ever been done to distinguish the risk of pesticide/herbicide residue and other chemicals added to cigarettes. Tobacco is classified as a non-food crop. People ingest the smoke into their lungs, yet chemical use on the crop does not have the restrictions that food crops have. That seems to be connected more with a social rejection of smokers than with scientific reasoning. If we really want to reduce lung cancer wouldn't it make sense to at least restrict chemical additives in cigarettes and toxins sprayed on tobacco?
and smoke the good stuff we do here: http://natsherman.com/
Tad spendy if they don't list prices and have an FAQ answering "'WHY DO I PAY MORE FOR YOUR CIGARETTES?"
http://www.az-smokes.com/ for those of us that don't need the glamour.
smoking is one of the main cause for cancer. It is leading more people to death. smoking causing cancer
Every time I read an article like this I think we are oversimplifying things. How can it be that there are chain smokers that live well into old age, and light or non-smokers that die of lung and other cancers? Yes, there is some chance involved, but if you're a hard smoker, smoking a pack a day since you were 16, and every year you get so many mutations, shouldn't it hit you at some point? Yet there are people like This Guy who are heavy smokers and die at age 96.
I think it also comes down to two different factors that are rarely mentioned, for some reason: the intensity of smoking and your personal immune system.
Some people take the smoke deep in their lungs and keep it there for a while before exhaling, and some people don't let the smoke reach their lungs at all. It has to make a huge difference if you smoke a pack a day this or the other way.
And also so many things come down to your personal immune system? Are you a sickly person? Pale and not feeling very well on most days? Perhaps you should better not take up smoking if your immune system is struggling even without the cell defects. On the other hand, if you have a strong immune system of a healthy individual, your body might be able to cope with the damages of smoking very well and perhaps even make up for most of it.
These two factors must be critically important in relation to smoking disease, yet I rarely find them even mentioned.
Breathing in radioactive polonium containing smoke can do nice things for you.
People often try to deflect by saying "ban booze too!", but last time I checked, beer belches don't make people second-hand drunk.
I love how the anti-smoking crowd is so black and white.
If you smoke you're an addict.
If you smoke you'll get cancer and die
If you smoke you'll give cancer to everyone around you
If you vape, you'll also get cancer and die, and give it to everyone around you.
If you smoke you'll be come more addicted than a crack addict.
Second hand smoke has never been thoroughly proven, when given the levels of tobacco smoke a person can reasonably expect to encounter. I enjoy a pipe or a cigar no more than once a month, but my doctor and insurance company treat it like I'm a two packs a day guy. I've been smoking an occasional cigar for years, never once have I ever run into some sort of addictive quality.
I have vaped in the past. All indication from serious studies on the matter are that nicotine by itself is a relatively harmless stimulant, with some actual positive benefits. It's bad for pregnancy, and some of the glycol solutions and heating elements may be bad for you, but again, we're talking extremely small doses, even if you regularly vape.
I love getting lectured about how I a terrible human being for occasionally enjoying tobacco and nicotine by a bunch hippies telling me about the miracles of pot, that will cure everything that ales you, and has no bad long term effects...
I'm waiting for a study that says the same thing about pot (soooo disgusting...way more than tobacco) and vaping.
so, how many mutations per day/year does the average non smoker accumulate in the same tissues?
aka How far is this from the baseline ?
Increased risk would after all be a function of the difference between the baseline mutations and the change caused by the factor being studied. I suspect the assumption that NO mutation occurs without tobacco would be a serious error, or at least require some serious proof.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
As part of some research I was doing into a possible radiation exposure incident I found some studies that showed that radiation exposure due to smoking is significant, perhaps the most significant carcinogen, most of which comes from soil. I wonder if anyone has tried to develop low radiation tobacco?
Smoking will will give you DNA induced superpowers.
Smokers For Trump!
They don't pay the crazy sums for health care that we do (single payer's a _lot_ less costly). Their gov't doesn't allow their drug companies to gouge their population. He's probably paying about $2800/yr in taxes if he's a pack a day guy and health care costs (per citizen) about $1800 (pounds, not dollars, but I'm a yank so I don't have a pound key :P).
Now, there's the little matter of ignoring all the incidental costs to smoking. The big one that I see is that tobacco _destroys_ land. It's a very water, labor and resource intensive crop and the nicotine poisons the soil. Not sure about the UK but in the states we heavily subsidize it, basically negating the taxes. Basically, food costs more (because land and water goes to tobacco) and subsidies negate the value of the taxes. None of this might be true in the UK though.
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