NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — New research confirms the major impact that cigarette smoking has on the work force. Economist Petter Lundborg from Free University, Amsterdam, estimates that smoking is responsible for more than one third of all sick days taken each year.The figure is based on an analysis of Swedish registry data containing the annual number of sick days amassed by 14,272 workers between 1988 and 1991.

Twenty-nine percent of the workers were current smokers, 26 percent were ex-smokers and 45 percent never smoked. The non-smokers averaged 20 sick days a year, while current smokers averaged 34 days and ex-smokers 25 days.

Smoking increased the annual number of sick days by 10.7 compared with never smoking. This corresponds to 42 percent of the average number of days of sickness for the whole sample.

The number of sick days due to smoking was reduced by only 1 day when Lundborg factored in the tendency of smokers to choose riskier jobs and activities than non-smokers, which, in turn, may make them more likely to be absent from work.

Still, in these adjusted analyses, smoking was responsible for 38 percent of all annual work absences due to sickness, Lundborg reports in the journal Tobacco Control.

Controlling for health status further reduced the effect of smoking to 7.7 days sick annually.

Smokers were older, less educated, had more chronic ailments and were more likely to report “bad” health than non-smokers. The effect of smoking on sick leave was similar for men and women.

Lundborg says knowledge about the link between smoking and sickness absences is of importance from several perspectives. It allows employers, for example, to see the potential benefits of implementing anti-smoking policies and practices at the workplace.

“At a higher societal level, such knowledge is necessary for policy makers to judge the potential benefits of societal interventions against smoking,” Lundborg writes.