FACTS ABOUT SMOKING www.TheCitizensWhoCare.org Real Time Death Toll as of A single cigarette contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 200 known poisons and more than 60 carcinogens. Smoking causes more than 15 different types of cancers, including cancer of the lungs, mouth, voice box (larynx), throat (pharynx), esophagus, bladder, kidney, pancreas, cervix, stomach, and some leukemias. Smoking increases your risk of getting lung diseases like pneumonia, emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Smokers are twice as likely to die from heart attacks as are non-smokers. Women over 35 who smoke and use birth control pills have a higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and blood clots of the legs. The CDC estimates that adult male smokers lose an average of 13.2 years of life and female smokers lose 14.5 years of life because of smoking, and given the diseases that smoking can cause, it can steal your quality of life long before you die. Tobacco is responsible for nearly one in every five deaths in the United States and is the largest cause of preventable death. Every year, about 3,000 non-smoking adults die of lung cancer as a result of breathing secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke also causes about 35,000 deaths from heart disease in people who are not smokers. Every year, between 200,000 and one million asthmatic kids suffer from increasingly severe asthma attacks due to secondhand smoke. Children are more vulnerable to respiratory and ear infections caused by secondhand smoke because their lungs are smaller and their immune systems are weaker. Sources: TIME - Numbers; Smoke-Free Washington; Freevibe: Drugs and the Environment; Sunny Side of Truth and the American Cancer Society Related issues: Dripping, E-Cigarettes   ©2007-2023 www.TheCitizensWhoCare.org/smoking.html