Smoking Risk Calculator

How does the smoking risk calculator work?

This is a tool that can make a difference both a mathematic one between the date since you’ve been smoking and when you quit but also a life difference if you decide that the result is very serious and you start thinking of quitting this habit.

Have you ever considered how much time does a cigarette take off your life? This is exactly what the smoking risk calculator does.

It takes account of the time you have smoked and in what quantity and tells you how many years you’ve probably lost because of smoking. All you have to do is input the number of cigarettes you are smoking daily, the moment you had started smoking and whether you stopped or not.

Basically it makes the difference between the two dates you specify (smoking start date and smoking end date) and transforms it into number of days.

Then it multiplies the number of days with the average number of cigarettes that you input and further it multiplies this number with an average of 11/12 minutes.

The result is a total number of minutes that are further on transformed if applicable into years, months, weeks, days, hours. Then you will be returned the result. You can calculate for as many times as you like with as many scenarios you want.

Example calculation:

Let’s take for instance the case of a male, smoking 20 cigarettes a day since March 2007. He will be given the following explanation:

“The fact that you smoked 20 cigarettes per day for a period of 2,810 days, means that cigarettes have taken 1 year, 3 months, 13 days, 8 hours and 0 minutes off your life.”

What studies have shown about smoking risks?

Studies have found that each cigarette costs us on average, about 5 to 20 minutes of our lives.

This means that an average smoker dies 7 years earlier than an average non-smoker.

When smoking one cigarette the effect of it is practically insignificant. When you light up the second one the effects start adding along with the number of cigarettes smoked and the results slowly starts to affect your health.

Taking an average of 11 minutes lost due to smoking one cigarette let's make some calculations:

■ 1 cigarette = takes 11 minutes.

■ 10 pack = takes almost 2 hours.

■ 20 pack = takes 3 hours and 40 minutes so if you smoke a 20 pack everyday means you lose almost 4 hours off your life every day.

■ 200 carton = takes 1 day 12 hours and 40 minutes.

I.e. If you smoked a 20 pack of cigarettes every day for 25 years this means you lost approximately 3 years, 42 weeks, 5 days, 20 hours and 40 minutes off your life.

Reference

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