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Burning Incense: The Risks

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  • Burning Incense: The Risks

    I've been asked this a few times, and I've always doubted the safety of inhaling incense fumes, though I was never able to find a reasonable study that proved an outcome either way.

    Until now. From an article in the news:
    NEW YORK - Burning incense may create a sweet scent, but regularly inhaling the smoke could put people at risk of cancers of the respiratory tract, researchers reported Monday.

    In a study of more than 61,000 ethnic Chinese living in Singapore who were followed for up to 12 years, the investigators found a link between heavy incense use and various respiratory cancers.

    The findings are published in the medical journal Cancer.

    Incense has been used for millennia in many cultures' religious and spiritual ceremonies. In Asia, people commonly burn incense in their homes — a practice that is becoming more popular in Western countries as well.

    Incense is usually derived from fragrant plant materials, like tree bark, resins, roots, flowers and essential oils. Past research has found that burning these materials can produce potentially cancer-causing substances, including benzene and polyaromatic hydrocarbons.

    However, no studies until now had linked the practice of burning incense to an increased cancer risk over time, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Jeppe T. Friborg of the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen.

    For their study, the researchers followed 61,320 Singapore Chinese men and women between the ages of 45 and 74 from the Hokkien or Cantonese dialect group. All of the subjects were cancer-free at the outset.

    Participants reported on their typical incense use, including how often they burned it in their homes and for how long — only at night, for instance, or all day and night.

    Over the next 12 years, 325 men and women developed cancer of the upper respiratory tract, such as nasal, oral or throat cancer. Another 821 developed lung cancer.

    No link to lung cancer seen
    The researchers found that incense use was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of cancers of the upper respiratory tract, with the exception of nasopharyngeal cancer. However, they observed no overall effect on lung cancer risk.

    Those who used incense heavily also had higher rates of a type of cancer called squamous cell carcinoma, which refers to tumors that arise in the cells lining the internal and external surfaces of the body. The risk was seen in smokers and nonsmokers.

    Study participants who used incense in their homes all day or throughout the day and night were 80 percent more likely than non-users to develop squamous cell carcinoma of the entire respiratory tract.

    The link between incense use and increased cancer risk held when the researchers weighed other factors, including cigarette smoking, diet and drinking habits.

    "This association is consistent with a large number of studies identifying carcinogens in incense smoke," Friborg's team writes, "and given the widespread and sometimes involuntary exposure to smoke from burning incense, these findings carry significant public health implications."
    One thing that might not have been taken into consideration, is the fact that many (many) Chinese smoke. In mainland China, women tend not to smoke in the areas outside the big cities (other than prostitutes), though this is changing. In Singapore, Chinese women smoke; it is more acceptable for women to smoke there.

    The effect of smoking on these various cancers cannot be denied.
    Experienced Community organizer. Yeah, let's choose him to run the free world. It will be historic. What could possibly go wrong...

    "You're just a jaded cynical mother****er...." Jeffpeg

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  • #2
    Interesting

    Personally i dont use incense because in the process of making it some insects could have been killed

    i try to keep my wushu practice at the minimum of killing

    in buddhism they also say dont be attached to rituals

    Om and peace and love

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    • #3
      sometimes i just want to stab you with a rusty shank u sound so much like btL its not even funny.

      i almost wish i could make a video of myself harming an animal just so u wouldnt like it lolo.

      and yeh im talking about u liu.

      oh things of note..harming animals, one time as a kid i ran over a squirrel on my bike on purpose just to see what would happen to both of us..i thought i might fall off and get hurt, or i thought he would get pissed..but he got hurt not me lololo

      umm one time at my grandparents cabin in the poconos i went looking for crawfish and i caught them and tortured them to death...lolo im not a psycho! i only did it to a few of them

      lolo what else, when i was really little i used to cats and swing them around by their tales and throw them very far for a 6 year old..

      i dont know what else the list of cruelity is pretty short...oh shit just remembered one

      my neighbors dog..this is the worst one btw, used to come at my dog jennifer all the time, constantly trying to bone her i used to hate it cause i didnt want anymore dogs and i told "stanley" many times to get the hell outta my yard. anyway just so u know i was 11 or 10 but no matter...one time i lost it and just repeatedly threw him on the concrete he was a little weineer dog or whatever but i ****ed him up lolo, i was surprised he didnt try and attack or run away but i kicked him and shit i was horrbile..he developed back problems...


      ummm, yeh u know i am sorry for those things but i hope that stings lolo
      "did you ask me to consider dick with you??" blooming tianshi lotus

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      • #4
        And I used to put hamsters in GI JOE parachutes and throw them off of five story apartment buildings in New York.

        Let's keep the thread on topic.
        Experienced Community organizer. Yeah, let's choose him to run the free world. It will be historic. What could possibly go wrong...

        "You're just a jaded cynical mother****er...." Jeffpeg

        (more comments in my User Profile)
        russbo.com


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        • #5
          more on topic ive heard incense is bad for you aswell..but if the windows are open and u burn incense daily who knows...i dunno. i know in hong kong i could smell incense almost everywhere, my teacher burned it everyday in his house. chinese incense is alot more diesel though compared to the shit we get here in the U.S.

          there the sticks are huge compared to ours and come in bundles of a thousand for 1 dollar lolo.

          i dont think if u burn incense from time to time espcially if its outside that it will matter, inside id keep it pretty ventilated but i wouldnt burn a bunch of it up in my neices room or anything
          "did you ask me to consider dick with you??" blooming tianshi lotus

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          • #6
            I know for me that the commercial stuff used to make me sick, but the homemade temple sandalwood incense always had a nice smell and never bothered my respiration, especially since I have mild asthma.
            "For some reason I'm in a good mood today. I haven't left the house yet, though. "

            "fa hui, you make buddhism sexy." -Zachsan

            "Friends don't let friends do Taekwondo." -Nancy Reagan

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