Tobacco.org

Lung damage from smoking cigars and pipes  

THIS STUDY involved 3,528 middle-age and older adults, most in their mid-60s, including 9 percent who had smoked pipes, 11 percent who had smoked cigars and 52 percent who had smoked cigarettes. All participants were given spirometry tests, which gauge breathing ability and lung function and are used to diagnose COPD, and urine tests to measure cotinine levels, which indicate the body's absorption of tobacco smoke. Cotinine levels were higher in cigarette smokers than in pipe and cigar smokers. Nonetheless, spirometry showed that people who smoked pipes or cigars but had never smoked cigarettes were more than twice as likely as nonsmokers to have obstructed airflow; the risk grew to more than threefold higher for pipe and cigar smokers who also smoked cigarettes. . . .

FIND THIS STUDY Feb. 16 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

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