Dental News - Heavy smoking during Irish famine led to dental caries, study finds

Dental Tribune International

Tue. 30. October 2018

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DUNEDIN, New Zealand: Despite the vast amount of research on smoking, the relationship between smoking and oral health in an archaeological sample of a historical population has never been done. In a new study, scientists from the University of Otago in New Zealand and Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland have examined the teeth of 363 adult victims of the Great Irish Famine, who died in the Kilkenny Union Workhouse between 1847 and 1851.

Co-researcher Prof. Eileen Murphy, from the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen’s, believes the research is important as it adds to the current clinical knowledge of how smoking affects oral health, since this is not yet fully understood. “The study also gives us a unique insight into the living conditions of the working classes in Victorian Irish society at the time of the Great Famine,” she said.

According to the study findings, 80 per cent of the adult remains showed evidence of dental caries and over half had missing teeth, indicating that most of the famine victims had poor oral health. There were also signs of pipe smoking marks on their teeth.

Co-researcher Dr Jonny Geber, from the Department of Anatomy at Otago, said: “We believe the bad condition of the teeth studied was because of widespread pipe smoking in both men and women, rather than their diet of potatoes and milk, as a comparative study of the 20^thcentury population on the same diet didn’t have the same evidence of poor oral health.” Geber went on to say that the Kilkenny study shows that it is not only diet that affects oral health.

“The high frequency of clay-pipe facets or marks from clenching a pipe between the teeth in many of the skeletons was evidence of smoking in both males and females. The current study adds to the growing body of evidence that demonstrates that smoking is not only bad for your health; it is also bad for your teeth,” said Geber.

The study, titled “Dental markers of poverty: Biocultural deliberations on oral health of the poor in mid‐nineteenth‐century Ireland”, was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology on 3 October 2018.

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