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Smoking and Tobacco

Introduction

Tobacco related diseases claim approximately 419,000 American lives each year.

Some of the adverse health effects include:

• Cigarettes contain at least 43 individual cancer-causing chemicals and smoking is directly responsible for almost 90% of all lung cancers.
• Smoking causes most of the cases of emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
• Smoking during pregnancy accounts for 20 - 30% of low birthweight infants and up to 14% of preterm births. Approximately 10% of all infant deaths are attributable to smoking.
• Apparently healthy, full-term infants of smokers have been found to be born with narrowed airways and impaired lung function.
• Smoking by parents (second hand smoke) is associated with adverse effects in their children such as exacerbations of asthma, increased upper respiratory infections (colds, ear infections, etc.) and SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). Children under 18 months of age are very susceptible to secondhand smoke causing lower respiratory tract infections.
• Secondhand smoke is responsible for 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in U.S. nonsmokers.

Nicotine is a very addictive substance. It reaches the brain faster than drugs that are used intravenously. Users of nicotine become physically, as well as, psychologically addicted. Because nicotine is used socially, this makes it an even more difficult habit to break.

Other reasons that smoking is difficult to give up include:

1. the fear of weight gain
2. the fear of having to survive the withdrawal symptoms that occur

The majority of smokers require multiple attempts to become nicotine-free, but persistence pays off! Ten years after smoking cessation, lung cancer risks are the same as in nonsmokers and fifteen years after smoking cessation, heart-disease risks resemble those of nonsmokers.

For more information:

Go to the Smoking and Tobacco health topic, where you can:

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This article is a NetWellness exclusive.

Last Reviewed: May 04, 2005

Karen L. Ahijevych, PhD, RN Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs College of Nursing Comprehensive Cancer Center James Cancer Hospital & Solove Research Institute The Ohio State University

 

Jerry Friemoth, MD Associate Professor Department of Family Medicine College of Medicine University of Cincinnati

 

Margie C. Sweeney, MD Associate Professor of Clinical Family Medicine Department of Family Medicine College of Medicine University of Cincinnati

 

Mary Ellen Wewers, PhD, MPH Professor & Associate Dean for Research College of Public Health Comprehensive Cancer Center James Cancer Hospital & Solove Research Institute The Ohio State University

 

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