Monday, January 17, 2011
New Reason to Not Light Up: Smoking Causes Genetic Damage within Minutes After Inhaling
From American Chemical Society (ACS)
As if the known associated risks weren’t already enough to avoid smoking; 18 different types of cancer, 3,000 deaths daily around the world, millions of chemicals with each inhale. Now, scientists have determined that cigarette smoke causes harmful changes to human DNA within minutes, resulting in mutations known to cause cancer.
Stephen S. Hecht, Ph.D., and colleagues point out in the report that lung cancer claims a global toll of 3,000 lives each day, largely as a result of cigarette smoking. Smoking also is linked to at least 18 other types of cancer. Evidence indicates that harmful substances in tobacco smoke termed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, are one of the culprits in causing lung cancer. Until now, however, scientists had not detailed the specific way in which the PAHs in cigarette smoke cause DNA damage in humans.
The scientists added a labeled PAH, phenanthrene, to cigarettes and tracked its fate in 12 volunteers who smoked the cigarettes. They found that phenanthrene quickly forms a toxic substance in the blood known to trash DNA, causing mutations that can cause cancer. The smokers developed maximum levels of the substance in a time frame that surprised even the researchers: Just 15-30 minutes after the volunteers finished smoking. Researchers said the effect is so fast that it’s equivalent to injecting the substance directly into the bloodstream.
The report, the first human study to detail the way certain substances in tobacco cause DNA damage linked to cancer, appears in Chemical Research in Toxicology, one of 38 peer-reviewed scientific journals published by the American Chemical Society.
Read the full article here.
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