Smokers take an average of 11 more sick days annually than nonsmokers and also are less productive on the job when they do come in, a study by Dutch researchers concluded.

CareerBuilder reported Aug. 14 that researcher Petter Lundborg, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Free University of Amsterdam studied 14,000 Swedish workers and found that even when the study was adjusted to account for smokers' tendency to take riskier jobs and have poorer underlying health, they still took 8 more sick days each year than nonsmokers.

"The results suggest that policies that reduce and/or prevent smoking may also reduce the number of days of sick leave," Lundborg wrote.

Some U.S. employers have set policies of not hiring smokers, while others have given workers the choice of quitting smoking or leaving their jobs.

The study was published in the April 2007 issue of the journal Tobacco Control.