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Cigarette smoking kills nearly about 420,000 people a year, making it more lethal than AIDS, accidents, homicides, suicides, drug overdoses, and fire.
Smokers are also inhaling other chemicals including cyanide, benzene, formaldehyde, methanol (wood alcohol), acetylene (the fuel used in torches), and ammonia.
Smoke also contains nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide, which are harmful gases.
What are the risks?
1. Heart disease
Smokers in their thirties and forties have a heart attack rate that is five times higher than their nonsmoking peers.
Cigarette smoking may be directly responsible for at least 20% of all deaths from heart disease, or about 120,000 deaths annually.
Smoking cigars may also increase the risk of early death from heart disease, although evidence is much stronger for cigarette smoking.
Its damaging effects on the heart are multifold:
Smoking lowers HDL levels (the so-called good cholesterol) even in adolescents.
It causes deterioration of elastic properties in the aorta, the largest blood vessel in the body, and increases the risk for blood clots. It increases the activity of the sympathetic nervous system (which regulates the heart and blood vessels).
Tobacco smoke may increase cardiovascular disease in women through an effect on hormones that causes oestrogen deficiency.
2. Cancer
Smoking is the cause of 85% of all cases of lung cancer in 2000, account for 28% of all cancer deaths. Quitting reduces the risk for lung cancer, even well into middle age.
Smoking and smokeless tobacco also cause between 60% and 93% of cancers of the throat, mouth, and oesophagus. Smokers also have higher rates of leukaemia and cancers of the kidney, stomach, bladder, and pancreas.
About 30% of cervical cancers have been attributed to both active and passive smoking. Lung cancer patients who survive and continue to smoke face a serious risk of developing a second tobacco-related tumour within ten years.
3. Dementia and neurologic diseases
People who smoke a pack a day have almost two and a half times the risk of stroke as non-smokers. The best current research suggesting that smoking makes little difference in the risk for Alzheimer`s, and if it does, the risk for dementia is slightly higher in smokers.
Certainly, smoking can affect blood vessels in the brain as it does in the heart, increasing the risk for dementia from small or major strokes.
4. Lung disease
Smoking is associated with a higher risk for nearly all major lung diseases, including pneumonia, flu, bronchitis, and emphysema. There is also a link between smoking and increased asthma symptoms.
Heavy smokers with asthma are also more likely to seek emergency treatment for their condition during times of heavy ozone pollution.
5. Female infertility and pregnancy
Studies have now linked cigarette smoking to many reproductive problems. Women who smoke pose a greater danger not only to their own reproductive health but, if they smoke during pregnancy, to their unborn child. Some of these risks include the following:
Greater risk for infertility in women.
Greater risk for ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage.
Greater risk for stillbirth, prematurity, and low-birth weight.
Smoking reduces folate levels, a B vitamin that is important for preventing birth defects.
Women who smoke may pass genetic mutations that increase cancer risks to their unborn babies.
6. Behavioural and Social Problems
Children of smoking mothers are more likely to have more motor control problems, perception impairments, attention disabilities, and social problems than children of non-smoking mothers. Some reasons for these associations have been suggested:
Women who breast feed and smoke pass nicotine by-products to their babies, which may contribute to these problems.
Women smokers tend to be less educated than women non-smokers, which may cause increased stress at home.
Smoking mothers and their children may share certain inherited psychologic factors, such as depression, which cause addictive and behavioural problems that are unrelated to smoking itself.
7. Effects on bones and joints
Smoking has many negative effects on bones and joints:
Smoking impairs formation of new bone and women who smoke are at high risk for osteoporosis.
Postmenopausal women who smoke have 17% greater risk for hip fracture at age 60, a 41% greater risk at 70, and a 108% greater risk at age 90.
Smokers are more apt to develop degenerative disorders and injuries in the spine.
Smokers have more trouble recovering from spinal surgery.
Smokers whose jobs involve lifting heavy objects are more likely to develop low back pain than non-smokers.
In women, smoking may also pose a small increased risk for developing rheumatoid arthritis.
What are the specific effects of parental smoking on children?
An estimated four million children a year fall ill from exposure to second-hand smoke. Parental smoking has been shown to affect the lungs of infants as early as the first two to 10 weeks of life. A number of studies have reported associations between smoking parents and childhood illnesses.
Parental smoking is believed to increase the risk for lower respiratory infections (asthma, bronchitis, and pneumonia) by 50%.
Environmental smoking is thought to be responsible for a large number of cases of lower respiratory tract infections every year. It also worsens the condition of children who have existing asthma.
Smoking in pregnant women and new mothers is strongly linked to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
Maternal smoking is believed to be related to 37% of the cases of childhood meningococcal disease, an uncommon but potentially fatal infection.
Parental smoking has also been linked to ear infections and eczema.
Maternal smoking has been linked to abnormal lung function in children; the defects persist throughout life.
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| Originally Written/Posted By : reena shah |
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| Posted on: 2008-09-02 |
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| Total Comments on this Blog : 0 |
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