Smoking Is A Bunch Of Hot Air
Dec 19 '02
The Bottom Line Due to the effects of smoking, I strongly feel smokers should give up smoking and ban it from society. It is a danger to humans, animals, and the environment.
Smoking is a habit that formed many years ago. It originated with the Native Americans a long time ago. Though cigarette smoking has changed over time, its horrible effects haven’t changed. It is still responsible for the many unnatural deaths that occur annually.
Cigarettes contain many poisons. Its smoke is full of 200 toxic substances. Nicotine is one of the key ingredients. It is found in a plant called nicotiana tabacum, which uses nicotine for protection against insects. This poison harms the body in many different ways. Users of cigarettes have a hard time to stop smoking because of the addictive power of nicotine.
When a person smokes, many different substances enter the body. One of these substances is tar. Tar is a dark, staining liquid that forms from burning cigarettes. As tar and nicotine make their way into your body, they destroy regular lung cells. When the cells regrow, they become carcinagenic, or cancer causing. These irregular cells multiply very quickly, destroying other normal cells. This process continues until there aren’t enough regular cells to support life. This disease is called lung cancer.
Tar also causes emphysema. This disease occurs when the tar enters the lungs. The tar thickly coats the lungs. As this happens, the alveoli, the air sacs in the lungs, start to tear and rupture. This lets the air escape. The capillaries, the blood vessels through which oxygen enters the bloodstream and carbon dioxide enters the alveoli to be exhaled, cannot properly deposit their wastes. This may become fatal if too many alveoli rip or the heart fails.
Smoking also causes smoker’s cough. Normally, cilia, hair that traps dust, and mucus catches dust particles from the air. The cilia whip back and forth, causing the dust- filled mucus to go up and leave the body by way of mouth. The smoke from cigarettes paralyzes the cilia causing the mucus to stay in the bronchi. This induces coughing until all the mucus leaves the bronchi.
When a cigarette is burning, carbon monoxide, a poisonous and colorless gas, is released. It enters your body and goes through the walls of the alveoli and capillaries to enter the bloodstream. There, the poisonous gas gets carried to your muscles by the hemoglobin. The hemoglobin is a substance in the blood that carries oxygen to your body parts so they can work. When the carbon monoxide enters the blood, though, it sticks to the hemoglobin, competing with the oxygen. When this happens, less oxygen can be carried to the muscle cells, causing them to tire more easily.
Nicotine is a cause of another problem too. It causes arteries to shrink and contract. It also speeds up the rate at which cholesterol is absorbed by the artery walls. Cholesterol is a substance produced by the liver that is needed for some body functions. If excessive cholesterol is absorbed, the artery could get clogged. To add to that, atheroma could also be formed. Atheroma forms when nicotine causes the platelets in the blood to become very sticky. Platelets are substances in the blood that clog external bleeding, like a cut, so that no more blood can escape the body. But when nicotine causes it to get sticky, it sticks to the sides of arteries to form atheroma. If all these problems happen at once, the artery can get completely blocked. This may eventually turn into a blood clot, a huge mass of blood caused by blood staying in one place for a long period of time. If this blood clot moves to the brain, you could get a stroke.
Smoking can especially be dangerous to people who exercise a lot. It raises the heartbeat rate. Smoking also damages your blood vessels’ inner walls. The cells that make up the inner walls create substances that let the arteries expand so oxygen demand can be controlled. If the damaged cells don't let the arteries expand, endurance will be lowered.
Smoking can also harm other people besides the smoker. The smoker does not inhale all the chemicals from the lit cigarette. Some of the chemicals get into the air and pollute it. People nearby inhale the toxins and are exposed to the same negative effects of smoking that smokers themselves are exposed to. This is called second hand smoking. Being around someone that smokes is not too different than doing the smoking yourself.
Babies that aren’t even born yet can be affected. If a pregnant woman smokes, she is risking her health and her child’s death. The poisons from the smoke may damage the baby’s heart or lungs. It also causes them to be born premature or with less weight. To reduce second hand smoking, local governments have banned smoking from many public areas.
Not only are the health aspects of smoking harmful to society. Cigarette smoking has made negative impacts on the environment as well. According to the Maryland National Fire Data Center, 38% of all accidental fires are started from burning cigarettes. Cigarette smoking can also affect you financially. Since of nicotine's addiction problem, smokers want more and more nicotine, which means more cigarettes. Cigarettes cost a lot of money due to the great tax rate for them. Illnesses for smokers are much more severe than for nonsmokers and might have to spend more nights in the hospital and need more expensive medicine. Since a lot of smokers' money are spent on cigarettes, they barely or cannot even afford medical treatment.
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