IF YOU think smoking low-tar cigarettes reduces the chances of getting lung cancer, you’d be wrong. Low-tar cigarettes are just as dangerous, according to a massive study in the US. Filtered cigarettes, however, are more safe than unfiltered ones.
For six years starting in 1982, a team studied 364,239 men and 576, 535 women over 30 who smoked, comparing the types of cigarettes they smoked with the likelihood of developing lung cancer (British Medical Journal, vol 328, p 72).
The differences found between smokers on low and medium-tar cigarettes were so small that the lead author of the…
