LONDON (Reuters) - Chewing tobacco and snuff are less dangerous than cigarettes but the smokeless products still raise the risk of oral cancer by 80 percent, the World Health Organisation's cancer agency said on Tuesday.
The review of 11 studies worldwide showed people who chewedtobacco and used snuff also had a 60 percent higher risk ofoesophagus and pancreatic cancer.
The researchers sought to quantify the risk of smokelesstobacco after a number of studies differed on just howdangerous the products were, said Paolo Boffetta, anepidemiologist at the WHO's International Agency for Researchon Cancer.
"What we did was try to quantify the burden of smokelesscancer," he said in a telephone interview. "This has never beenattempted in such a systematic way before."
The researchers, who published their findings in LancetOncology, did this by looking at population-wide studies andtrials of both humans and animals.
They found frequency of use varies greatly both across andwithin countries, depending on sex, age, ethnic origin andeconomic background, and were highest in the United States,Sweden and India.
They also found that while snuff and chew were lessdangerous than smoking because they were not linked to lungcancer, getting cigarette users to switch was not good publicpolicy.
"If all smokers did this there would be a net benefit,"Boffetta said. "The point is we don't know whether this wouldhappen and there is no data to suggest these smokers would stopor switch."
(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Maggie Fox)
