Smoking Kills

Smoking Kills

                ‘Everytime you light up a cigarette you are proving that your life is not worth living.’

When your parents were young, people could buy cigarettes and smoke pretty much anywhere, even in hospitals. Advertisements for cigarettes were all over the place. Today the public is more aware about how bad smoking is for our health. Smoking is restricted or banned in almost all public places and cigarette companies are no longer allowed to advertise on TV, radio, and in many magazines. Almost everyone knows that smoking causes cancer, emphysema, and heart disease, that it can shorten your life by 10 years or more and that the habit can cost a smoker thousands a year. So why are people still lighting it up? The answer, in a word, is addiction.

Cigarette manufacturers spend millions of dollars every year to convince you and your children that smoking will make you exciting, athletic, important, sophisticated, and sexually attractive. Quitting smoking is the best preventive medicine. Experts estimate that stopping smoking is about 10 times more cost-effective at saving lives than even the best medical screening tests.

The benefits are enormous. Your heart, lungs, and blood vessels have an amazing capacity to heal themselves when given the chance. When you stop smoking, your body starts repairing itself almost immediately. The risk of heart attack, stroke, and cancer starts dropping immediately.
            

 Here are a few of the chemicals in tobacco smoke and other places they are found:

·     Acetone—found in nail polish remover. Fragrant volatile liquid ketone, used as a solvent.

·     Acetic acid—an ingredient in hair dye

·     Ammonia—a common household cleaner. A toxic, colourless gas with a sharp odour. Ammonia compounds are commonly used in cleaning products and fertilisers. Arsenic—used in rat poison. Containing pesticides used in tobacco farming occur in small quantities in cigarette smoke.

·     Benzene—found in rubber cement and gasoline

·     Butane—used in lighter fluid

·     Cadmium—active component in battery acid

·     Carbon monoxide—released in car exhaust fumes. An odourless, colourless gas that is released from burning tobacco. When it is inhaled it enters the blood stream and interferes with the working of the heart and the blood vessels. Up to 15% of a smoker’s blood can be carrying carbon monoxide instead of oxygen.

·     Formaldehyde—embalming fluid

·     Hexamine—found in barbecue lighter fluid

·     Lead—used in batteries

·     Naphthalene—an ingredient in mothballs

·     Methanol—a main component in rocket fuel

·     Nicotine—used as an insecticide. Colourless, poisonous alkaloid derived from the tobacco plant. It is a powerful drug, which affects the brain and quickly becomes addictive.

·     Polonium – 210 - Radioactive element – used in nuclear weapons as well as an atomic heat source.

·     Tar—material for paving roads. It’s a sticky brown substance that forms when tobacco cools and condenses. It collects in the lungs and can cause cancer.

·     Toluene—. A highly toxic chemical. Industrial uses include rubbers, oils, resins, adhesives, inks, detergents, dyes and explosives.