Reuters Blogs

FaithWorld

Religion, faith and ethics

10:29 August 26th, 2008

Now they say incense could cause cancer

Posted by: Tom Heneghan
Tags: FaithWorld, , , ,

A man prays at the Yong He Gong (Tibetan Lama) Temple in Beijing, 7 July 2008/David GrayThere was a report last May saying researchers had found incense was a mind-altering substance. Now comes news of another scientific report saying it could cause cancer. Given its ceremonial role in several religions, this attention to incense is made for a blog like this one.

These reports leave an interesting question unanswered, however — why are scientists studying this now? Is there an upswing in incense burning around the world? Could this be linked to the Catholic Church’s plans to revive limited use of traditional liturgies? It’s hard to imagine that scientists would be watching religious trends. Is this just a coincidence?

One comment so far

[...] ecco davvero una brutta notizia per tutti gli estimatori dell’incenso. Anzi, un’altra, perché già nel maggio scorso uscirono [...]

- Posted by Incenso? Sì al suo uso, ma con moderazione « SPIRITUAL SEEDS

Post Your Comment

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word

House Rules:
  • We moderate all comments and will publish everything that advances the post directly or with relevant tangential information
  • We try not to publish comments that we think are offensive or appear to pass you off as another person, and we will be conservative if comments may be considered libelous information.