For Your Consideration: The Effects Of Pipe Smoking On Your Health

Over the past half-century, there has been a lot of debate in regards to the effects smoking has on a person's health. And while it has been proven that cigarette smoking is quite hazardous, very little has been said about pipes and cigars... with exception of the 1964 Surgeon General's Report.

The 1964 Surgeon General's Report is the ground-breaking report on smoking. In fact, it is the one quoted on all the packs of cigarettes talking about how hazardous smoking cigarettes is to a person's health. But more than that, this report is the only Surgeon General's Report to take into consideration that cigarettes are different than pipes and cigars. After all, the way these are processed are completely different - with all sorts of deadly additives being put into cigarettes (listed here) that are not in cigars or pipes. All the reports after this one deal purely with cigarettes and their effects.

So what does the Surgeon General say about pipes and cigars? Let's take a look:

SOURCE

"The death rates for pipe smokers are little if at all higher than for non-smokers, even for men who smoke 10 or more pipefuls a day and for men who have smoked pipes more than 30 years."

"The risk of developing cancer of the lung for the combined group of pipesmokers, cigar smokers, and pipe and cigar smokers is greater than for non-smokers, but much less than for cigarette smokers."

"Nicotine is rapidly changed in the body to relatively inactive substances with low toxicity. The chronic toxicity of small doses of nicotine is low in experimental animals. These two facts, when taken in conjunction with the low mortality ratios of pipe and cigar smokers, indicate that the chronic toxicity of nicotine in quantities absorbed from smoking and other methods of tobacco use is very low and probably does not represent an important health hazard."

"For cigar and pipe smokers combined, there was a suggestion of high mortality ratios for cancers of the mouth, esophagus, larynx and lung, and for stomach and duodenal ulcers. These ratios are, however, based on small numbers of deaths...."

"The fact that the over-all death rates of pipe and cigar smokers show little if any increase over non-smokers is very difficult to reconcile with a concept of high nicotine toxicity. In view of the mortality ratios of pipe and cigar smokers, it follows logically that the apparent increase in morbidity and mortality among cigarette smokers relates to exposure to substances in smoke other than nicotine."

"For smokers of cigars only or of pipes only, three of the studies show small increases in over-all death rates, ranging from 5 percent to 11 percent. The study of men in 25 states, however, gives slight decreases for both types, as does the British study for the two types combined."

"For current pipe smokers (Table 5), men smoking less than 10 pipefuls per day have death rates very close to those of non-smokers. For heavy pipe smokers (10 or more per day) two studies show increases of 15 and 12 percent in death rates, but the other two studies show little or no increase. The over-all mortality ratio of 1.05 does not differ statistically from unity. The British doctors study gives a mortality ratio of 0.91 for cigar and pipe smokers together (presumably mostly pipe smokers) who consume more than 14 gms. of tobacco daily."

"Among the pipe smokers there were 28 percent who inhaled in the U.S. study and 18 percent in the Canadian study. The U.S. mortality ratios are 0.8 for non-inhalers and 1.0 for inhalers; the Canadian data contain too few deaths to allow a breakdown by inhalation."

"Death rates for current pipe smokers were little if at all higher than for non-smokers, even with men smoking 10 or more pipefuls per day and with men who had smoked pipes for more than 30 years.

Ex-pipe smokers, on the other hand, showed higher death rates than both non-smokers and current smokers in four out of five studies. The epidemiological studies on ex-cigar and ex-pipe smokers are inadequate to explain this puzzling phenomenon. According to Hammond and Horn (10) and Dom (6) the explanation may be that a substantial number of cigar and pipe smokers stop smoking because of illness."

Is there a risk with smoking a pipe or cigar? Of course, but there are risks with everything. And according to the Surgeon General's Report, the risk associated with a pipe or a cigar is extremely low.

So in the end, eat, drink, be merry, and enjoy your pipe.

Currently listening to: The Arena EP by The Accident Experiment