Smoking hazards should be apparent to everyone by now. Time and again, it has been said that smoking is hazardous to your health. Not only that, it is hazardous to the health of the people around you. If you have read, heard, or watched these smoking hazards, why do you still smoke? Smoking is addicting because of the nicotine. Nicotine is the highly addicting substance found in cigarettes. But nicotine, also poses various hazards to our health. Aside from nicotine, cigarettes also have lots of carcinogenic and mutagenic substances like tar, acrolein, nitrosamines, and many others.All these substances contribute to the hazards that smoking cause. What are these?

The most popular smoking hazard is lung cancer. Facts show that in the United States, 87% of lung cancer cases are related to smoking. Other cancers related to smoking are found in the oral cavity, esophagus, larynx, and pancreas.

Carbon monoxide and cyanide are commonly found in smoke. Long term exposure to these substances also cause health hazards like emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Also, smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day increases the risk of acquiring tuberculosis by 2 to 4 times.

Another smoking hazard is heart attack. A smoker is 5 times more likely to have a heart attack compared to a nonsmoker.

Even nonsmokers are exposed to the hazards of smoking! Secondhand smoke increases the heart disease risk of nonsmokers by 25 to 30% and their lung cancer risk by 20 to 30%. Annually, 3,400 deaths are caused by lung cancer in nonsmokers.

All these smoking hazards point to death. A smoker’s life expectancy is reduced by 2.5 to 10 years. Today, smoking is the second major cause of death in the world, estimated at 58.8 million deaths worldwide!

Quit now before you inevitably die from smoking! Quit now before more harm is done to your body and to the people around you!

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