Effects of Smoking on Respiratory System Every day, millions of people light up a cigarette and smoke. Some have just started smoking, while others have smoked their whole lives. Most likely, once you start smoking, you won’t be able to stop. It will be nearly impossible and if possible, it will not be easy. When people start smoking, they don’t really think about the harm that they are doing to themselves with every cigarette. Some don’t know how bad they are hurting themselves, while others are simply just ignorant to the fact that they are. Many people don’t even realize that cigarettes are bad for them. Cigarettes do however have many harmful effects that really hurt your body. In every single cigarette, there are over 4,000 chemicals (Figure 1). Some chemicals that are found in cigarettes are nicotine (a deadly poison), arsenic (found in rat poison), methane (found in rocket fuel), ammonia (found in many cleaners), cadium (found in batteries, carbon monoxide (found in car exhaust), formaldehyde (used to preserve body tissues), butane (found in lighter fluid), and hydrogen cyanide (poison used in gas chambers.) Every time you smoke, these chemicals travel through your blood causing harm to various parts of your body (Center for Young Women’s Health Staff.) Not only are you harming yourself, but you are also harming the people who are breathing in your second hand smoke, unwillingly. The chemicals entering your body are just as bad as the ones entering the person who is breathing in the smoke and are just as harmful. In fact, second hand smoke is often worse than the smoke a smoker breathes in.
Figure 1 “The Dangerous Poisons of Smoking”
Second hand smoke is the combination of the tobacco being burned by the smoker, and the smoke being exhaled by the smoker (almost twice as bad). There are also over 4,000 chemicals in second hand smoke and 50 of them have been clinically proven to have been cancer causing.