Only a few exposures to cigarettes can cause heart damage

by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition

Photo credit: Anthony Celenie

A recent research report in PLOS Medicine found that even a few cigarettes a day increases the long-term incidence of cardiovascular and mortality outcomes. These effects have been known for a while but the new study is more comprehensive.

Why am I writing about smoking and cardiovascular disease in a blog devoted to noise? It turns out that there may be similarities between short intermittent exposures and adverse outcomes not just for smoking and cardiovascular disease, but also for intermittent noise exposure and auditory health.

It is hard for researchers to study intermittent or occasional exposures in any population — that would require continuous measurement or surveillance for the population, something difficult and costly to do — but average measurements may obscure the effects of short-term intermittent exposures. It appears that the impact of short impulse noise exposures may have a disproportionate effect on auditory health in workers. Since workers’ ears are no different anatomically or physiologically from everyone else’s ears, this is undoubtedly true for the public. 

Similarly, dermatologists report that one severe sunburn early in life can lead to melanoma later. Avoiding cardiovascular disease from smoking, hyperacusis from noise or melanoma from sunburn is easy. If you don’t smoke, if you avoid loud noise or use hearing protection, and if you protect yourself from the sun, you should reduce the risk of all these diseases.

About noise: if it sounds loud, it’s too loud and your auditory health is at risk. Turn down the volume, use hearing protection or leave the noisy environment. If you think there might be sudden noise, insert your earplugs right away.