Health warning issued for hand-rolled cigarettes
Roll-your-own (RYO) cigarettes expose smokers to similar levels of cancer-causing chemicals as manufactured cigarettes, scientists claim.
New research published in the journal Addiction Biology compared urine samples in 127 smokers of ready-made cigarettes and 28 samples from RYO cigarette smokers to check the levels of two known cancer causing chemical.
The results 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 behaviour and nicotine exposure were taken into account.
The authors raised concern at the fact that women also actually had higher concentrations of these toxins irrespective of the cigarette type smoked.
Lead researcher Dr Lion Shahab, from Cancer Research UK, said: “Many smokers believe that RYO cigarettes are more ‘natural’ and therefore are less harmful than manufactured cigarettes. The current findings suggest that this is not the case.
“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, added: “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 ready made cigarettes.”
She added half of all long-term smokers die from their addiction to and so continued effort had to be made to reduce the impact that tobacco had on people’s lives.
“Preventing children from starting smoking is vital. Putting tobacco out of sight in shops and getting rid of vending machines will all help to protect young people from the devastating influence of tobacco marketing,” Ms Lee ended.
