According to the American Lung Association, there are an estimated 50 million people who smoke. For some reason, people just do not fully understand the risks they take by smoking.
Cigarette smoking is a frequent cause of many health problems for smokers. To begin with, there are many hazardous ingredients in cigarette tobacco. Some of these ingredients are poisonous or addictive. Cigarette smoke produces thousands of chemicals that are hazardous to a smoker’s health. There are over 4,000 chemicals produced by a burning cigarette, and at least 200 of these chemicals are known to be poisonous to a person’s health.
Though filters help block some of the chemicals, they will not stop them completely. Nicotine is an addictive drug and also one of the most dangerous ingredients in cigarette tobacco. Cigarette smokers are addicted to the nicotine in cigarettes just like a junkie is addicted to heroin or cocaine. When a person smokes a cigarette, the body reacts immediately to the chemical nicotine. Nicotine begins to affect a smoker’s blood pressure, the flow of blood from their heart, the heart rate, and breathing rate.
Cigarette smoke also contains carbon monoxide, which is a highly toxic gas that reduces the amount of oxygen that the blood can carry. This gas is the same poisonous gas released from a car exhaust pipe. When combined with the effects produced by nicotine, an imbalance is created in the demand for oxygen by the cells and the amount of oxygen the blood is able to supply. Tar is another chemical produced from cigarette smoke, which contains at least 30 cancer-causing irritants.
Tar is a mixture of several substances that condense into a sticky substance in the lungs. Tobacco manufacturers have produced cigarettes that are low in tar and nicotine to reduce the chance of cancer, but these cigarettes are still hazardous. Smoking cigarettes is linked to many deadly diseases, including lung cancer, cancer of the larynx, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and coronary heart disease.
The hazards of these diseases increase with the quantity of cigarettes smoked and the length of time the habit is continued. Smoking-related diseases caused the death of more than 400,000 Americans in 1994. Almost everyone knows that smoking is hazardous to their health and can cause lung cancer, along with many other diseases. Smoking is responsible for 30 percent of all cancer deaths annually in the United States, totaling more than 155,000 each year. In closing, it has been medically proven that cigarettes have many dangerous effects on a smoker’s life.
Even though I knew the effects of smoking, I was unable to quit smoking until I was about seven years into the habit. It is a very dangerous substance which may lead to many hazards.
