Smokeless Tobacco As Hazardous as Cigarettes

It may not be inhaled into the lungs, but smokeless tobacco exposes users to some of the same potent carcinogens as cigarettes. The discovery comes from the University of Minnesota Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC).

TTURC researchers compared the urine of 182 oral snuff users with 420 cigarette smokers. They found that snuff users were exposed to higher levels of NNK, a carcinogen known to produce lung and pancreatic cancer. Stephen Hecht of the University of Minnesota Cancer Center led the research.

SPH faculty members Chap Le and Xianghua Luo served on the study¿s data and analysis team. Their primary role was to analyze the baseline data from three cigarette reduction studies and three smokeless tobacco reduction studies to compare carcinogen levels between the smokers and snuff users.

The research team found that smokeless tobacco products--despite what some have proposed--are not a safe alternative to cigarettes. In fact, the study supports the idea that oral use of tobacco actually provides a more efficient means for delivering certain carcinogens into the body through the bloodstream. Findings were published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

"No one can say that smokeless tobacco is a safe substitute for cigarettes," says Luo. "The only truly safe alternative to smoking is to quit."