快猫短视频

THE sweet smell of incense could be bad for your health. Burning incense, a
popular meditative and medicinal aid often used by Buddhists, Hindus and
Christians in their homes and places of worship, exposes people to dangerous
levels of smoke laden with cancer-causing chemicals.

Levels of one chemical believed to cause lung cancer were 40 times higher in
a badly ventilated temple in Taiwan than in houses where people smoke tobacco.
Incense burning also creates more pollution than road traffic at a local
intersection.

鈥淲e truly hope that incense burning brings only spiritual comfort, without
any physical discomfort,鈥� says Ta Chang Lin at the National Cheng Kung
University in Tainan. But 鈥渢here is a potential cancer risk. We just cannot say
how serious it is.鈥�

Lin鈥檚 team collected air samples from inside and outside a temple in Tainan
City and compared them to samples at a traffic intersection. Inside the temple,
they found very high concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs),
a large group of highly carcinogenic chemicals that are released when certain
substances are burnt.

Total levels of PAHs inside the temple were 19 times higher than outside and
slightly higher than at the intersection. 鈥淒ue to poor ventilation in the
temples and accumulation from non-stop incense burning, we were not surprised by
these results,鈥� says Lin.

A PAH called benzopyrene, which is thought to cause lung cancer in smokers,
was found in very high quantities inside the temple. The researchers compared
benzopyrene levels inside the temple with other indoor areas, and found they
were up to 45 times higher than in homes where residents smoked tobacco, and up
to 118 times higher than in areas with no indoor source of combustion, such as
cooking fires.

鈥淭he concentrations of PAHs inside the temple depends on how many visitors
come to worship that day. During some major ceremonies, hundreds or even more
than a thousand sticks are burnt at the same time,鈥� says Lin. 鈥淪ometimes the
visibility is so low you can鈥檛 see clearly across the room. We are concerned for
the health of workers or keepers in the temples.鈥�

Lin鈥檚 team also tested for pollutants known as total suspended
particles鈥攁 range of similarly sized particles that make up most of the
emissions from human activity. They found that concentrations of TSPs inside the
temple were three times higher than at the traffic intersection and 11 times
higher than outside the temple. These concentrations exceed the standard 鈥渟afe鈥�
levels for ambient air set in Taiwan.

Lin now hopes to work with public health experts to see how much of the
carcinogens reach the lungs of people in the temples. He plans to study the
relationship between PAH concentrations in the air and PAH metabolites in temple
keepers鈥� urine.