Risks of Television Viewing

Time spent watching television may be linked to increased risk of death.

The Wall Street Journal (1/12, Winslow) reports that there may be a link between the time an individual spends watching television and his or her risk of death, according to a study published in the journal Circulation.
Bloomberg News (1/12, Matsuyama, Saminather) reports that investigators "tracked the TV-viewing habits of 8,800 adults and followed them for six years."
The study findings indicated that "every hour of daily TV watching increased the risk of dying from any cause by 11 percent," HealthDay (1/11, Reinberg) reported. The researchers found that "for cardiovascular diseases the increased risk was 18 percent, and for cancer it was nine percent." When "compared with those who watched less than two hours per day, those who watched TV for more than four hours each day had an 80 percent increased risk of dying early from cardiovascular disease and a 46 percent increased risk of dying from any cause." Reuters (1/12), WebMD (1/11, Hendrick), the UK's Telegraph (1/12, Hough), and the UK's Daily Mail (1/12) also covered the story.