No Sense in Incense

You've had a long day at work and come home to relieve your stress. Maybe you draw a bubble bath, light some candles, or sit on the floor and meditate. You might also burn a stick of incense: lilac for rest, passionflower for peace of mind, or myrrh for protection and healing purposes. If you burn incense on a regular basis, you may want to think again.

A new study has been published by Cancer, a medical journal, which links the prolonged use of incense to respiratory cancers later in life. Some people use incense merely as a fragrance, some use it as a meditation device to help them focus and get them to a calm place, and some use it religiously as an invocation of spiritual enlightenment.

Twelve years ago, researchers set out in Singapore, to prove the effects of incense on a culture that uses it often. Just being released now, the study followed 61,320 Chinese people who burn incense constantly in their homes. Early studies have shown that some of the effects of burning incense can potentially cause cancer but now we know the prolonged effect of inhaling those chemicals over a long period of time thanks to Dr. Jeppe T. Friborg and his team of researchers from the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen.

When the study of men and women between the ages of 45 and 74 started, all of the participants were cancer free. The variables of incense use studied by the group were primarily based on how often it was burned and during what time of day. Throughout the twelve years the study took place, 325 of the men and women developed a kind of upper respiratory cancer: oral, nasal, or throat. Lung cancer was found in another 821 participants.

The link to lung cancer risk, however, is void because the overall effect of incense smoke wasn't proven to be higher in those that didn't burn incense. However, the risk for upper respiratory cancers in incense burners was higher than normal.

Friborg and his group write, "This association is consistent with a large number of studies identifying carcinogens in incense smoke....and given the widespread and sometimes involuntary exposure to smoke from burning incense, these findings carry significant public health implications."

Of the participants that burned incense during most of the day and night or throughout the day, 80 percent were more likely to develop respiratory tract squamous cell carcinoma, a type of cancer where tumors grow on the internal and external body surfaces of the throat, nose and mouth.

The higher risk of cancer in constant incense users was unchanged when factored into their diet, alcohol use and smoking habits. Possibly next on the list of clinical trials is a panel to determine which incense scents, if any, are more or less of a cancer-causing risk. Although the study was conducted in a culture where burning incense is common and was recorded and the participants who developed cancer had been exposed to an environment of constant incense burning, the outcome doesn't smell good.