Smokers who cut down inhale more

Press, 25 February 1987, Page 24

Smokers who cut down inhale more

NZPA-Reuter Boston A study says smokers who cut down on the number of cigarettes they consume may still be inhaling more tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide than they think. The tests, conducted at San Francisco General Hospital, found that volunteers who smoked fewer cigarettes unconsciously compensated by puffing more often or inhaling more deeply than usual. As a result, although the volunteers cut their cigarette consumption 84 per cent, the amount of tar and nicotine they inhaled declined only 50 per cent

“On average, smokers greatly increased their intake of nicotine and other toxins per cigarette as the

number of cigarettes they smoked per day was reduced,” the researchers reported in the “New England Journal of Medicine.”

“As a consequence, the potential health benefit of the reduction in daily exposure to tobacco-related toxins was much less than (one) would have predicted,” they said. The phenomenon, known as “oversmoking,” is also the reason why low tar and low nicotine cigarettes are not really safer for smokers. Previous studies have shown that people who switch to the low tar brands change their smoking patterns, increasing the amount of smoke they take into their bodies in an attempt to maintain the high levels of nicotine

in their bloodstream. Nicotine is the addicting chemical in tobacco smoke. Studies have shown that it works in *he same way that heroin hooks its users.

The new research, led by Dr Neal Benowitz, of the San Francisco General Hospital Medical Centre, found that the more the smokers cut their consumption, the more tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide they pulled out of each cigarette.

By the time the average two-pack-a-day smoker was down to five cigarettes, they found each smoker was inhaling about 3.4 times more tar, 3.2 times more carbon monoxide and 2.8 times more nicotine from each cigarette.