Cigarettes Harm Everyone Exposed

Cigarette smoking’s causal link to lung cancer, heart disease, and other serious illnesses is fairly undeniable at this point. In reaction, society is making things harder and harder for smokers with the intention of discouraging the habit—with some degree of success.

Although increased taxes on cigarettes, smoking bans in restaurants, campuses, and other public places, and similar actions are bad news for smokers, they’re great news for the rest of us.

Even with increasing restrictions on smoking in public, chances are most of us have been, and will be, exposed to tobacco smoke at some point. Unfortunately, this passive smoke (commonly known as secondhand smoke) carries all the health risks as smoking directly, although to lesser degrees. It’s critical to avoid cigarette smoke and other environmental toxins and pollutants as much as possible, but equally important to take steps to protect yourself from the inevitable exposure.

Smoking Kills … Even Those Without the Habit

Smoking is a deadly habit, plain and simple. Even though this is far from “new news,” I think it could be beneficial for everyone to hear the cold, hard facts about smoking once again to hammer home the importance of avoiding this addiction and exposure to cigarette smoke.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cigarettes claim 440,000 lives per year in the US—and that’s just accounting for the people who actively smoke! When you add in the costs of lives related to damage caused by secondhand smoke, that number rises to one-in-five deaths in this country.

When people think of the health effects of smoking, lung cancer often is the first risk that comes to mind—and with good reason. Lung cancer accounts for more deaths than breast, prostate, and colon cancer combined, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In 2006 (the most recent year for which statistics are currently available), the CDC reports that 106,374 men and 90,080 women were diagnosed with lung cancer, and 89,243 men and 69,356 women died from the disease. Even more troubling than these statistics though is that public health records show smoking is more devastating to the heart.

Coronary heart disease is not only the leading cause of death in the U.S., but also the leading cause of death caused by smoking. Smokers are two to four times more likely to develop coronary heart disease than nonsmokers and have more than twice the risk of stroke, according to the most recent American Heart Association report.

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