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Airway Cancer May Be Caused By Incense Burning

Copenhagen, Germany- A new study has been issued by the researchers in Germany that link burning of Incense may cause certain types of Airway Cancer.

The scientists of Copenhagen Statens Serum Institute has revealed a possible connection between people that burn different types of Incense and a number of airway cancers.

“This type of association is found in several studies that show that there are carcinogens in incense smoke, and it carries significant health implications,” said Dr. Jeppe T. Friborg.

The long-term exposure to the incense smoke can lead to a number of mouth, tongue and respiratory tract cancers.

Most of the time the incense smoke that causes these cancers is from plants and materials grown from resins, flowers, tree bark and essential oils.

When these substances burn, they produce smoke that is laced with hydrocarbons, benzene and carbonyls.

This is not the first time that incense smoke has been linked with cancers but it is the first time that long term observations on both healthy people and those with cancers have been compared.

Nearly 60,000 residents of several Chinese provinces between 1993 and 1998 were observed, and these subjects were followed until 2005.

After different tests over 1,000 cancers were reported, 821 lung cancers and 325 upper respiratory cancers were revealed.

Those people that are frequent incense users appear twice as likely to develop these cancers than the otherwise healthy members of the 60,000 subjects.

The risk to cancer among frequent incense users that are smokers and non-smokers appears to be the same.