TOBACCO KILLS!!A long-term user has a 50% chance of dying prematurely from tobacco-caused disease. Tobacco kills four million people a year, one death every 8 seconds! |
The truth is that one out of every two long-term smokers will ultimately be killed by tobacco. In developed countries, half will be killed in old age, after age seventy, but the other half will be killed in middle age, before age seventy, and those who die from smoking before age seventy will lose more than 20 years of life expectancy.
Tobacco Smoke consists of clouds of particles and gases containing over 4 000 chemical compounds, many of them toxic. Forty-three are known cancer-causing agents.
Some examples of these poisonous compounds include:
- Hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous gas;
- Nicotine, an addictive drug which reduces heart muscle function;
- Carbon monoxide, the poisonous gas from car an exhaust, which reduces the oxygen in the blood
- 85% of the smoke from a cigarette is side stream smoke. The rest is mainstream smoke.
- Side-stream smoke particles are smaller than mainstream smoke particles -- they reach deeper into the lungs and stay longer in the body.
These poisons include:
- carbon monoxide, up to 15 times greater
- nicotine, up to 21 times greater.
- ammonia, up to 170 times greater.
when combined with proven adverse effects of a number of toxic agents such as asbestos, nickel, alcohol (ethanol), dye stuff, tar, volatiles, radiation and certain pathogenic organisms.
It also increases the risk of developing chronic chest diseases and asthma associated with exposure to dusts in mining, to animal and vegetable dusts, and to certain chemicals.
Combined exposure to toxic agents and tobacco smoke in the environment, particularly in workplaces, amplifies the severity of adverse effects beyond what could be expected from smoking or the toxic hazard alone. In some cases, the detrimental effects of those hazards can be greater when combined with the effects of tobacco smoking.
The severity will increase with the number of cigarettes smoked per day and the number of years the person has smoked. This disease is rare in non-smokers.
Including asthma, cancers of the stomach, cervix and kidney, male and female fertility problems, impotence, miscarriage, still birth, low birth weight and death in early infancy, osteoporosis, peptic ulcer and back pain.
Refer to section 3: Question and Answers for further health facts on smoking.
| <---- Previous |