Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you and can be attributed to several health issues and deaths. But now, a new study suggests that smoking may be the cause of even more deaths and diseases than previously thought.
CBSDC reported that the study, funded by the American Cancer Society and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, claims that an additional 60,000 to 120,000 Americans die from tobacco use every year. It was originally thought that smoking killed around 480,000 people in the U.S. each year.
These new figures are startling to add to the already extremely high number of deaths caused by smoking.
For the study, almost 1,000,000 Americans aged 55 and over, were tracked for a 10-year period, during that time more than 180,000 deaths occurred, including nearly 16,500 among current smokers. The data also revealed that current smokers were three times more likely to die than those who did not.
Moreover, Medical News Today noted that researchers found that around 17 percent of the deaths and diseases in smokers were outside the Surgeon General's list of the 21 diseases and cancers already tied to smoking.
Not surprising, the risk of death from such conditions decreased when the participants kicked the habit.