When a cigarette is burning, carbon monoxide, a poisonous and colourless 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 is carried to your muscles by the haemoglobin that is a substance in the blood that carries oxygen to your body parts so they can work. When the carbon monoxide enters the blood, it sticks to the haemoglobin, 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 and 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, such as 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 become 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 is the principal risk factor for developing COPD i.e., chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Emphysema is characterized by permanent structural changes in the lung tissue. The deterioration in lung function associated with COPD is directly related to duration of smoking and the number of cigarettes smoked (“pack-years”). Smoking during childhood not only increases the risk of developing COPD in adulthood but also lowers the age of its onset.
Cigarette smoking during childhood and adolescence increases the number and severity of respiratory illnesses. It also causes retardation in the rate of lung development and in the level of maximum lung function and retardation in lung growth during childhood means that the lungs may never get normal function and development. Every smoker and nonsmoker experiences a slow decline in lung function starting at about the age of 30. In smokers this gradual decline starts both from a lower baseline and at an earlier age. Smokers suffer from decreased lung reserve, which means they are unable to run or walk as far or as fast as people older then them who have never smoked. Smokers thus can expect permanently impaired lung function in contrast to their nonsmoking elders.
During the past half-century, lung cancer rates have dramatically increased in women, to the extent that lung cancer is now the leading cause of cancer death in women, exceeding both breast cancer and colon cancer. This increase in female mortality also increases with the number of women smokers.
Another major cost of smoking is the effect it has on the heart and circulation. Premature coronary heart disease (CHD) is one of the most important medical consequences of smoking. Sadly, sudden death may be the first sign of CHD and sudden death is four times more likely to occur in young male cigarette smokers than in non-smokers. Women who use both cigarettes and oral contraceptives increase their risk of developing CHD tenfold. The excess risk of coronary heart disease is halved in people who stop smoking one year later, but the risk level doesn’t return to that of nonsmokers until 15 years after quitting. In a recent study of atherosclerosis, the progression of fatty deposits in the carotid artery was found to be dependent on the total number of years of tobacco exposure, rather than on the patient’s current smoking status. Finally, smoking is a strong risk factor for several types of blood-vessel disease. Smoking causes poor circulation to the legs by narrowing the blood vessels that supply these extremities. Quitting reduces, but does not eliminate, this risk. Once it becomes symptomatic, such circulatory impairment often requires surgery.
Cigarette smoke irritates the eyes, nose, throat, and gums. These tissues respond by thickening and by undergoing cellular changes that can eventually lead to mouth, throat, or esophageal cancer. Gum disease and tooth loss are also common among smokers. Quitting halves the risk for cancers of the oral cavity and esophagus during the first five years after giving up, but ex-smokers always have an increased risk as compared to the risk in those who have never smoked. Cigarette-smoke irritants can also permanently damage the tissues of the larynx. The effect of this is a noticeable deepening and hoarseness in the voices of chronic smokers. Quitting reduces the risk of developing laryngeal cancer. Vocal-cord polyps (non cancerous growths) are also strongly related to tobacco exposure, and such polyps rarely disappear without surgery.
Smoking can cause bladder and kidney cancer and it’s the strongest risk factor known for developing bladder cancer. An ex-smoker’s risk of bladder cancer is reduced by a half within a few years after quiting, but a higher risk of developing these cancers remains for decades. Smoking is also associated with osteoporosis (thining of the bones due to loss of bone minerals) in women, and with spinal disk disease in both sexes. Lost bone calcium cannot be fully recovered, and degenerative bony changes are irreversible. Osteoporosis predisposes to fractures and is responsible for a lot of disabilities, especially in elderly women.
Surprisingly smoking can also effect reproduction because infertility is more common among smokers but is not irreversible. The damage done to smokers’ babies during pregnancy often is irreversible additionally; smoking during pregnancy is associated with dire consequences for the baby as a fetus, as a newborn, and even as a child. Recognition of the evidence of this damage has prompted researchers to designate it as “fetal tobacco syndrome”. Miscarriages are two to three times more common in smokers, as are stillbirth due to fetal oxygen deprivation and placental abnormalities induced by the carbon monoxide and nicotine in cigarette smoke. It has also been shown that mothers are more likely to have hyperactive children if they smoke during the pregnancy. Mothers of "hyper kinetic" children were found to smoke an average of 14 cigarettes during pregnancy compared to only 6 cigarettes smoked on average for mothers of "normal" children. The study, conducted by the Department of Psychology at the University of Saskatoon, Canada, studied 20 children (18 boys, 2 girls) who were currently being treated with Ritalin for their hyperactivity. Although cigarette smoke contains many highly poisonous compounds, the researchers speculate that the accumulation of carbon monoxide in the foetal blood stream could lead to serious reductions in oxygen to the developing infant. It was found that the carboxyhaemoglobin levels (haemoglobin that is carrying carbon monoxide instead of oxygen) were concentrating in the developing foetus reaching twice the levels of that in the mother. 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. I believe that this has to be considered as a huge cost of smoking because the smoker is not only killing herself slowly, but has also given her child a disadvantage before they could do anything to help themselves.
Smoking doesn’t only give you all of these internal injuries, but they can also affect the skin of a smoker. Smoking causes premature facial wrinkling through vasoconstriction of the capillaries of the face (vasoconstriction decreases the flow of oxygen and nutrients to facial skin cells). The effect of this reduced blood flow is visible in deep crow’s feet radiating from the corners of the eyes and pale, grayish, wrinkled skin on the cheeks. These effects may emerge after five years of smoking and are largely irreversible, except through costly and traumatic facial surgery.
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. When we talk about harmful cigarette smoking in the air, we are really talking about two kinds of smoke. They are called mainstream smoke, which has been inhaled, then expelled by the smoker, and side stream smoke, which is produced as the cigarette, simply burns. Tests have proven that side stream smoke contains more harmful ingredients than mainstream smoke. Smoke from an idling cigarette contains almost twice as much tar and nicotine and up to four times as much carbon monoxide as smoke inhaled while puffing a cigarette. Exposure to tobacco smoke, and especially carbon monoxide, is especially likely to be harmful to people already suffering from chronic lung disease and heart disease. Another study has proven that school age children from homes where the adults smoked cigarettes have higher heart rates and blood pressure than children from homes where cigarettes were not used. Illnesses affecting breathing also were found to occur more often in children with parents who smoked cigarettes. This all shows that a smoker is not the only person who suffers from the effects of smoking.
In conclusion I believe that there are many costs of cigarette smoking and that nothing is gained from smoking. Even if you are not being affected now by smoking later on, even if you stop there is a high risk of you catching all sorts of diseases involving your heart, lungs, skin, growth and your ability to reproduce. Therefore, is smoking really worth the risk?
Bibliography
‘Collins Human Biology’ by Boyle, Mike & Indge, Bill & Senior, Kathryn, published 1999, pages 218 and 530-531.
‘A New Introduction to Human Biology’ by Baker, Margaret & Indge, Bill & Rowland, Martin, published 2000, pages 82-3, 207, 212-214.
‘Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 1999’,‘Lung cancer and heart disease’, © & ® 1993-1998
‘Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 1997’,‘Lung cancer and heart disease’© & ® 1991-1996
‘http://cis.nci.nih.gov/fact/3_14.html’ web site about the facts of cancer
‘http://www.amaassn.org/special/womh/library/scan/vol_2/no_8/nejm926a.htm’ web site about effects of smoking
‘http://www.chem-tox.com/pregnancy/smoking.htm’ web site on the effects of cigarette smoking on babies.
