Long-term incense use 'increases cancer risk'

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

SINGAPORE (AFP) — Long-term daily use of incense, an important feature of Asian religious practices, increases the risk of some cancers, an international study has found.

The research found that people who burned incense at home daily for more than 40 years had a risk of getting a certain type of cancer more than 70 percent higher than people who did not.

"This is chronic, long-term exposure," Koh Woon-Puay, a co-author of the study, told AFP in an interview late Wednesday.

"We're not saying, therefore, that people must stop burning it. Try to reduce exposure to it."

The study involved about 61,000 middle-aged and elderly ethnic Chinese people in Singapore who were cancer-free between 1993 and 1998.

Researchers looked at how frequently they...