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Sat Jan 15, 9:17 pm ET WASHINGTON (AFP) – Those first few puffs on a cigarette can within minutes cause genetic damage linked to cancer, US scientists said in a study released. In fact, researchers said the "effect is so fast that it's equivalent to injecting the substance directly into the bloodstream," in findings described as a "stark warning" to those who smoke. The study is the first on humans to track how substances in tobacco cause DNA damage, and appears in the peer-reviewed journal Chemical Research in Toxicology, issued by the American Chemical Society. Using 12 volunteer smokers, scientists tracked pollutants called PAHs, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, that are carried in tobacco smoke and can also be found in coal-burning plants and in charred barbecue food. They followed one particular type -- phenanthrene, which is found in cigarette smoke -- through the blood and saw it form a toxic substance that is known to "trash DNA, causing mutatio...

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH : About 10,000 Israelis die each year from smoking, 8,664 actual smokers and the rest from other people's cigarette smoke, according to Dr. Gary Ginsberg and colleagues who just published an article in the European Journal of Public Health. Around 23 percent of the population over 18 smokes, and about half of all smokers eventually die of tobacco-related diseases. The former head of the Health Ministry's Center for Disease Control, Prof. Manfred Green, who is now head of the University of Haifa's School for Public Health, had previously set the estimate considerably lower. The previous official estimate of deaths among active smokers was 3,859 per year; the new calculation puts the real figure at more than twice that. Ginsburg, an expert on health statistics at the Health Ministry, Dr. Eli Rosenberg of the ministry's health promotion unit and Tel Aviv University tobacco control expert Dr. Leah Rosen concluded from their calculations t...