Smoking Risk Calculator

Determines the smoking consequences on your life expressed in the number of years that are taken off.

There is more information on how the calculator computes the result in the text below the tool.

The smoking risk calculator uses the average time one cigarette takes off one’s life and performs some simple calculations to determine the overall effect of smoking on your life (length).

It accounts for the time you have been smoking, whether you have already quit or not and for the quantity of cigarettes you smoke (or have smoked).

It is known that one cigarette takes between 5 and 20 minutes off the smoker’s life.

In the below calculator, this time is set at an average of 11 minutes. Therefore, a 10 pack of cigarettes takes almost 2 hours off one’s life.

For example, if you have smoked 10 cigarettes every day for the last 25 years, this means you have shortened your life by around 2 years, 1 month and 22 hours.

Jump to:

1. Calculator

2. Algorithm

3. References

No. of cigarettes per day
Gender
When did you start smoking?
If you quit smoking, when was that?
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Steps on how to print your input & results:

1. Fill in the calculator/tool with your values and/or your answer choices and press Calculate.

2. Then you can click on the Print button to open a PDF in a separate window with the inputs and results. You can further save the PDF or print it.

Please note that once you have closed the PDF you need to click on the Calculate button before you try opening it again, otherwise the input and/or results may not appear in the pdf.

Smoking consequences

Studies have shown that by smoking one cigarette, we lose between 5 and 20 minutes of our lives.

This also translates into another worrying figure: an average smoker tends to die 7 years earlier than an average non-smoker.

The effects are adding up and go beyond the normal health consequences and nicotine addiction.

Therefore, although a lucky smoker might avoid heart disease or malignancy, they are most likely going to live less than a counterpart of similar demography who has not smoked.

 

Algorithm

The smoking risk calculator consists of the following input fields:

■ Number of cigarettes per day;

■ Gender;

■ Smoking start date;

■ Smoking quit date (if applicable).

The first thing to calculate is the difference between the current date (if the person hasn’t stopped smoking) or the date at which the person has stopped smoking and the smoking start date. This difference is then transformed in days.

The number of days is multiplied by the number of cigarettes the user has declared they are smoking every day. The obtained total number of cigarettes is then multiplied by an average of 11/12 minutes to determine the time (off life) result.

 

References

1. Centers for disease control and prevention. Health Effects of Cigarette Smoking. National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Accessed 2017.

2. Yanbaeva DG, Dentener MA, Creutzberg EC, Wesseling G, Wouters EF. Systemic effects of smoking. Chest. 2007; 131(5):1557-66.

Specialty: Miscellaneous

Type: Calculator

No. Of Variables: 4

Article By: Denise Nedea

Published On: March 15, 2017 · 07:39 AM

Last Checked: March 15, 2017

Next Review: March 9, 2023