I was searching and I haven’t found such a thread. How does snuff affect our health? Some says it’s not dangerous. Some says it’s less dangerous than smoking, but still dangerous, some says it may cause cancer, heart problems, overpressure etc. But the problem is that most researchers do not distinguish snuff and snus and they call them both just “smokeless tobacco”, so it’s impossible to know what exactly is the study about. Let’s put this in this place - all the researches, experiments, WHO raports about only nasal tobacco. Plasma concentration of ascorbic Acid and some hematological parameters in tobacco snuffers among the igbos of southeastern Nigeria - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23209991 Carcinogenic Tobacco-specific N-Nitrosamines in Snuff and in the Saliva of Snuff Dippers http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/41/11\\_Part\\_1/4305.full.pdf “Tomar explains that while smoking does result in higher instances of cancer, there is no research supporting the idea that someone who switches to smokeless tobacco really reduces their risk.” http://news.ufl.edu/2008/04/01/research-proves-snuff-is-still-very-dangerous-stuff/ and one more interesting part: " nicotine from snuff is 3.6 mg and is 4.5 mg from chewing tobacco, compared to 1 to 2 mg from a cigarette."** WHO research : http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol89/mono89.pdf Poschl site**: http://www.poeschl-tobacco.com/nasal-snuff-health.html

" Other cancers Studies on cancers at other sites did notprovide conclusive evidence of a relationship with smokeless tobacco use. Nasal use Studies on nasal use of snuff did not provide conclusive evidence of a relationship with cancer." Page 366 of WHO’s report.

The bigger risk with smoked tobacco is cardiovascular risks, not cancer. There’s a large misconception with this fact. The majority people who get tobacco-associated cancer (“associated” = in culture not in science), for example lung cancer, do not and have never smoked. Likewise the majority of long-term smokers do not get cancer. The CV risks are a major concern. If people are dying of heart attacks, and sequelae from stoke, it skews the numbers and begs the question, would they have gotten cancer xyz if they had lived long enough? Haven’t been able to find much in the literature (NCBI) on nasal snuff and CV-associated heath concerns though. As I’m a scientist in the US, I don’t see this being NIH funded anytime soon–maybe a chew study would get money. Hopefully the UK, etc, will look at this soon. No clue why it hasn’t been done already.

Some of the studies cited in the WHO report found a slight increase of nasal cancer risk. I believe it was the South African studies. Something like a 2x risk. But you have to bear in mind that the base rate of nasal cancer among caucasians in North America is about 1.4 in 100,000. You have a MUCH higher chance of dying of testicular cancer, or in a car accident, than you do of getting nasal cancer from even the heaviest snuffing, even if those (rather small) studies are accurate. Another factor to bear in mind is that snuffs in different parts of the world have different compositions. Indian snuffs, for example, have Uranium and Polonium in them - not added to them obviously but taken up by the roots of the tobacco plant (see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3557727), but European snuffs do not have Uranium, though they do have Polonium, as does all tobacco. Smokeless tobacco’s effects on cardiovascular health are poorly researched. It doesn’t cause the same structural changes to the heart that smoking does (see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12704595), but it does raise blood pressure and heart rate, though not as much as smoking. To quote from the last-cited study: [quote]Results on the risk for myocardial infarction have provided conflicting evidence, 2 case-control studies showing the same risks as in non-tobacco users and one cohort study showing an increased risk for cardiovascular death. In all, the use of smokeless tobacco (with snuff being the most studied variant) involves a much lower risk for adverse cardiovascular effects than smoking does. Whether or not the apparent risk reduction is a useful strategy to help inveterate smokers to quit is a matter of debate, as are the public health effects of a high prevalence of snuff use in some populations.[/quote] So, tl;dr - there are a lot of unknowns, but doubtless it is safer than smoking to a truly significant degree.

Impact of Smokeless Tobacco Products on Cardiovascular Disease: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/122/15/1520.full

It’s interesting that the studies comparing baseball players found no higher rates of hypertension; I bet exercising your heart can help mitigate lots of the negative effects of snuff on the cardiovascular system, such as they are. Sort of like how it wasn’t unheard of in the 1920s for athletes to smoke cigarettes, but they were still able to run and whatnot. Also interesting how American snuff/chew seems much more likely to be associated with MI and whatnot than snus. I’d guess it’s due to strength - you see the pinches of snus people use and they’re small enough to only contain maybe 10-20mg of nicotine, delivering maybe 1.5-3mg over the course of an hour at most. But some American dippers will often throw in damn near a quarter of a 30g tin at once, and I’d say all American dippers I’ve seen use much larger pinches than I see people using with snus.