Smoking less than 1 cigarette a day still increases chance of early death: 4 study findings

People who smoke less than one cigarette a day still have a higher risk of death than non-smokers, according to a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

For the study, researchers tracked more than 290,000 individuals aged 59 to 82 — including 22,000 current smokers and 156,000 former smokers — who filled out surveys about their smoking habits in 2004 and 2005, reports Reuters

By 2011, researchers found adults who regularly smoked at least part of one cigarette a day were 64 percent more likely to have died of any cause.

Here are three more study findings.

1. Individuals who smoked one to 10 cigarettes a day had an 87 percent higher change of dying from all causes during the study than non-smokers.

2. Those who smoked just one cigarette a day were nine times more likely to die of lung cancer than non-smokers, while smoking up to 10 cigarettes a day led to almost 12 times the risk of dying from lung cancer, according to the report.

3. Individuals who quit smoking after age 50 were 42 percent more likely to die from all causes during the study than those who stopped smoking at younger ages.

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