Personally, I find smoking a disgusting addiction however; there are 47 million people out there smoking everyday. What's worse than them hurting themselves is the fact that every time they smoke they're affecting everyone by second-hand smoke. Second-Hand smoke is a mixture of the smoke that is given off by the burning end of a cigarette,pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. Thi
s is involuntarily inhaled by non-smokers.
There are 599 ingredients in a cigarette. I won't bore you by listing all of them. A few key ones are nicotine,tar,carbon monoxide,formaldehyde,ammonia,hydrogen cyanide and arsenic. What makes smoking so hard to give up is the nicotine. Nicotine is highly addictive, it is inhaled directly into your lungs and reaches your brain in only 6 seconds.
On to second-hand smoke, its the cause of 53,800 deaths in the United States each year. All these deaths per year are people who thought they didn't need to worry about it since they didn't smoke themselves. What they didn't realize is
just because your not physically putting that cigarette in your mouth, your still inhaling the smoke from smokers. Smoke lingers in the air for hours after the cigarette has been smoked. There are 43 known cancer causing ingredients in a cigarette. This explain why smoking causes 3,400 lung cancer deaths per year. Heart disease is also caused by smoking/second hand smoking, 22,700 - 69,600 deaths occur because of heart disease.
One of the worst parts of second-hand smoking is when a parent smokes with there child around. I can personally relate to this because a good number of people on my dad's side of the family are smokers. My dad himself smokes, how
ever he never smoked with myself or my sister anywhere near him. My grandmother however would always smoke in the house with all the windows closed and didn't seem to care.
In the US 21 million children live in homes where residents.visitor's smoke in the home on a regular basis. As a result, between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections affect infants and children. This results in 7500-15000 hospitalization's and 430 sudden infant death syndromes (SIDS) in the US annually.
So my advice to you is if someone's smoking anywhere near you get as far away as you can, never inhale it, and if you do smoke stop!
A website & 2 video's :
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/secondhandsmoke.html
Secondhand Smoke: Triumphs & Tragedies
3 comments:
Really interesting article Kate. This is a very scary topic, just because I dont think we realize how many people smoke and how it effects everyone that doesnt smoke. Great facts also! Good job.
I agree that smoking is a disgusting addiction and one of the worst things people could do to themselves and everyone around them. With so many second-hand smoke deaths it is unbelievable that not more has been done to try to stop or prevent smoking. It is disgusting how many deaths come from second-hand smoke, like all the lung cancer and heart diseases. One of the biggest things I hate is when people are smoking in an area where they shouldn’t or blow smoke in your direction. Also when people smoke in an enclosed areas where nonsmokers are. Just like Kate said when people smoke in the house or enclosed areas with children or other nonsmokers growing up. In my mind that stuff is just as bad as slowly killing someone or even attempted murder.
Smoking is a huge killer, but obesity is right there in terms of health cost. good job
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