Aug 27 2008
Spirituality and Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons
For a number of years, fresh on the tail of attending college, I practiced Zen Buddhism. More Zen, less Buddhism. (For those of you unfamiliar with it, Zen is to Buddhism as prayer is to most other religions. Zen’s motto might be: “It’s about the meditation, stupid.”) And yes, there were those months I used mildly woo-way paraphernalia to set the mood: a lit candle and a stick of incense creating an upward line of fragrant smoke.
It now seems that specific spiritual practices might be bad for you. By “bad” I mean “increase your risk of cancer.” In the ScienceDaily article, Burning Incense Increases Risk Of Respiratory Tract Cancers, we learn that burning incense . . .
. . . produces a mixture of possible carcinogens, including polyaromatic hydrocarbons, carbonyls and benzene.
Would you like a little benzene with your Ommmmm.?
The study made me wonder whether aromatherapy, a relative newcomer on the block of “alternative therapies” in this country, might actually be more harmful in the long term than it is helpful in the short.
A quote by the study authors concludes the ScienceDaily piece:
“Given the widespread and sometimes involuntary exposure to smoke of burning incense, these findings carry significant public health implications,” they wrote. “Besides initiatives to reduce incense smoke exposure, future studies should be undertaken to identify the least harmful types of incense,” they added.
Things deemed “natural” or “spiritual” are not always good for you, no matter how warm and fuzzy you consider the words to be.
If you had an asian neighbor who burned incense 24/7/365 you would learn real quick it’s just foul smelling nuisance stuff.