Cigarette Smoking on Human Health

As many people know, smoking is extremely bad for the human body. Smoking causes several diseases, the main disease being lung cancer. There are said to be 69 caner causing chemicals inside a standard cigarette (www. canceresearchuk. org 05/01/2007). Smoking can cause many diseases, but people still choose to smoke. There is no reason to need to smoke. People who smoke cause people around them to smoke as well without realizing it. The smoke goes down into their lungs and causes build ups of tar around the alveoli and down the airways to the lungs.Cigarette Smoking on Human Health

Tar is a term that describes a collection of solid particles that smokers inhale when they light a cigarette. It is a mixture of lots of chemicals, many of which can cause cancer. (www. cancerresearchuk. org 06/01/2007) Nitrogen oxide can constrict the airway, causing the lungs to do more work than usual. One of the most deadly chemicals for humans is in a cigarette, arsenic. It can cause cancer as well as damaging the heart and its blood vessels. Small amounts of arsenic can accumulate in smokers’ bodies and build up to higher concentrations over months and years.

Another of the most dangerous chemicals in cigarette smoke is formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is a smelly chemical used to kill bacteria, preserve dead bodies and manufacture other chemicals. It is one of the substances in tobacco smoke most likely to cause diseases in our lungs and airways. Formaldehyde is also a known cause of cancer. It is believed that even the small amounts in second-hand smoke could increase our lifetime risk of cancer. Tobacco smoke is one of our major sources of formaldehyde exposure. Places where people smoke can have three times the normal levels of this poison. www. cancerresearchuk. org) many other chemicals are in cigarette smoke.Cigarette Smoking on Human Health

ORDER A PLAGIARISM -FREE PAPER NOW

These chemicals include: benzene, cadmium, polonium, acrolein, chromium, many metals are also present in small quantities; such as nickel, cobalt, lead and beryllium. Second hand smoke can also cause damage to your body. People around the smoker may breathe in the cigarette smoke and can then be affected by it. Second hand smoke is a major cause of children’s illness — yet 85% of adults who smoke and who live with a child do not ensure that the child is not exposed to the smoke from their cigarettes. http://www. smoke-free. ca 06/01/2007) Many other organs are also affected by cigarette smoke; these include the nose, mouth, larynx, lungs, liver, stomach, kidney and the bladder. (www. cancerresearchuk. org 05/01/2007) the smoke, when first inhaled, mainly only irritates the eyes, mouth and nose. But as you carry on smoking the smoke damages the cells lining your airways. Average adult lungs contain about 750 million alveoli, which can be affected by smoking. (A new introduction to biology 16/01/2007) All of the organs listed can also develop cancer.Cigarette Smoking on Human Health

Cigarette smoke may cause your life expectancy to decrease. For example being a smoker at the age of 30 cuts a man’s life expectancy by 51/2 years, and a woman’s by more than 61/2 (Nigel Hawkes, 20th April 2005, the times) . Many of the chemicals in cigarettes are actually addictive. This means that the smoker could easy be hooked and may become dependant on cigarettes, using them to relieve stress and such like. Nicotine is the main drug that is addictive in cigarettes. It also causes damage to the body in the form of killing nerve cells.

Nicotine causes addiction in much the same way as heroin or cocaine. It is just as addictive as these ‘harder’ drugs. Nicotine is a stimulant that increases your heart rate and affects many different parts of your brain and body. Smokers get a high because nicotine triggers the release of dopamine in the brain – a chemical linked to feelings of pleasure. This also means that smokers start to make a mental link between the act of smoking and feeling good. (www. cancerresearchuk. org 05/01/2007).

Smoking is not only dangerous but it is also extremely expensive. On average the ’20-a-day’ smoker can expect to pay around i??2500 per year (http://news. bbc. co. uk 06/01/2007). Not only is it wasting money, but surely there are better things in life to spend that sort of money on. The environmental effects of smoking are also numerous, from just causing litter to potentially causing a forest fire. Smokers in the U. K.Cigarette Smoking on Human Health

throw away about 20 million cigarette packets and about 300 million butts every day (www. whoschoosing. rg. uk (16/01/2007). Most of the time smokers just throw their butts on the floor, not even thinking about who has to clear it up or what potential hazards it could cause. For example; a rat in a sewer could swallow the cigarette butt and choke. This litter can be reduced by simply giving up smoking. Also if the cigarette hasn’t been extinguished properly then it could cause a fire. The smoldering cigarette butt only has to be near some sort of ‘fuel’ and the next thing you know you have a large scale fire on your hands.

To conclude, if you actually sit down and think about it, smoking kills. Overall smoking is estimated to be responsible for approximately 30% of cancer deaths in developed countries, that is, over 46,000 deaths in 2002 in the UK. (www. cancerresearchuk. org 06/01/07) I think that people who smoke are not really thinking. The information to show that smoking kills is readily available pretty much everywhere. And the information in this essay also supports this argument. Smoking causes global suffering to millions of people, which could and should be stopped.Cigarette Smoking on Human Health