Polonium (Po), the most volatile of naturally-occurring radionuclides in plants, was analysed in three common brands of cigarettes produced in Portugal. The analyses were carried out on the unburned tobacco contained in cigarettes, on the ashes and butts of smoked cigarettes and on the mainstream smoke. Po in tobacco displays concentrations ranging from 3 to 37 mBq g, depending upon the cigaret...

OBJECTIVE Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) has the highest incidence rate of both colorectal cancer (CRC) and smoking prevalence in Canada. The objective of this study was to examine if CRC is associated with smoking in this population. METHODS Newly diagnosed cases identified between 1999 and 2003 were frequency-matched by 5-year age group and sex with controls selected from the residents of N...

BACKGROUND Although several epidemiological studies have examined the mortality among users of spit tobacco, none have compared mortality of former cigarette smokers who substitute spit tobacco for cigarette smoking ("switchers") and smokers who quit using tobacco entirely. METHODS A cohort of 116,395 men were identified as switchers (n = 4443) or cigarette smokers who quit using tobacco enti...

We have examined the association between cigarette smoking and ovarian cancer survival in 676 women with invasive epithelial ovarian cancer, recruited into a case-control study in the early 1990s. Information about cigarette smoking and other personal and reproductive factors was obtained from a personal interview at the time of diagnosis. Cox proportional hazards models were used to evaluate t...

Five ex-cigarette smokers and five primary pipe and cigar smokers each smoked a large cigar. Carboxyhaemoglobin (COHb) and plasma nicotine levels were measured. In the ex-cigarette smokers mean COHb rose from 2.9% to 9.6% and plasma nicotine from 79.0 nmol/l to 281 nmol/l (12.8-45.6 ng/ml). This response was similar to that of cigarette smokers smoking cigarettes, which indicated that the subje...

This paper uses novel data sets, which report both the quantity of cigarettes smoked and a measure of nicotine intake obtained from blood or saliva samples for a large and representative population over time for the UK and the US. We show that self-reported quantities, routinely used in the smoking literature, explain only a small fraction of the variance in smoking as measured by nicotine inta...

BACKGROUND The risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) seems to be enhanced by cigarette smoking and lowered by alcohol drinking. PATIENTS AND METHODS To assess whether cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking affect NHL survival, a population-based prospective study on 1138 Italian patients, diagnosed in 1991-1993, followed-up until 2002, was carried out. At diagnosis, clinical and socio-demograp...

Recent findings suggest that novel associations can be learned during sleep. However, whether associative learning during sleep can alter later waking behavior and whether such behavioral changes last for minutes, hours, or days remain unknown. We tested the hypothesis that olfactory aversive conditioning during sleep will alter cigarette-smoking behavior during ensuing wakefulness. A total of ...

A study of the relation between smoking habits and lung cancer in male industrial workers over a period of three years has confirmed the earlier findings in doctors that the death-rate from lung cancer correlates closely with the number of cigarettes smoked. Of 54,460 men studied 68.7% were current cigarette smokers. The annual mortality rate from lung cancer was 0.33 per thousand in non-smoker...

BackgroundAlthough over the last decade smoking rates have decreased, hookahs seem to have proved increasingly popular in some eastern countries. It has been demonstrated that smoking increases the plasma fibrinogen level, which is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Our objective was to investigate the extent to which hookah smokers in comparison with cigarette smokers and n...