Burning incense poses cancer risk

In many Asian families and temples, burning incense is a common practice and strongly linked to religious beliefs/ceremonies. In recent times, burning incense has slowly become common and popular in Western countries for its sweet scent, to enhance ambience, to help one relax etc., but the latest studies have shown that regular inhaling of the smoke from incense could put people at risk of cancers of the respiratory tract.

The ABC has reported that during an extensive 12-year study of more than 61,000 ethnic Chinese living in Singapore, a link between heavy incense use and various respiratory cancers was found by investigators with the findings published in the medical journal Cancer.

Some commonly used raw incense and incense making materials include Makko powder, Borneol camphor, Sumatra Benzoin, Omani Frankincense, Guggul, Golden Frankincense, Tolu and white Indian Sandalwood powder.

A group of researchers led by Dr Jeppe Friborg of the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen was able to link the practice of burning incense to an increased cancer risk over time by following 61,320 Singapore Chinese men and women between the ages of 45 and 74 years old from the Hokkien or Cantonese dialect group and recording their typical incense use, including how often they burned it in their homes and for how long - only at night, for instance, or all day and night etc.

All of the subjects were cancer-free at the outset but over the next 12 years, 325 men and women developed cancer of the upper respiratory tract, such as nasal, oral or throat cancer. Another 821 developed lung cancer.

These are alarming statistics. Researchers are hopeful that further studies will be able to determine whether different types of incense are associated with different degrees of cancer risk.