Each cigarette in a pack of smokes contains thousands of chemicals, including up to six hundred additives and flavorings. When a cigarette is ignited, approximately four thousand chemicals are released – and then inhaled into the lungs. If you smoke, you’ve probably heard of numerous reasons to quit, and also the numerous conditions that can be caused by smoking. These chemicals are responsible for the damaging conditions caused by smoking, and will continue to cause damage for as long as you continue to expose yourself to them.
Eight of the Friends in Your Cigarette:
Nicotine: This chemical is supplied in the tobacco in your cigarette, and is additionally the reason that you keep smoking. The addictive component of nicotine causes you to crave your next cigarette, and makes quitting smoking nearly as hard as breaking a heroin or cocaine addiction. Nicotine influences your brain within seven seconds of inhaling smoke from a cigarette, causing your blood pressure to rise and the tiny blood vessels under your skin to constrict, causing wrinkles.
Tar: This ingredient is the main contributor to the throat and lung cancer that can be caused by smoking cigarettes. Tar additionally leaves yellowing stains on your fingers, teeth and lung tissue.
Carbon Monoxide: If you’ve visited a house that has been built in the last five years, you may have noticed that it was equipped with a carbon monoxide detector, because no amount of carbon monoxide is safe to come into contact with. This poisonous gas has a drastic effect on your body and inhibits your ability to absorb oxygen, limiting the amount of physical activity that you are able to participate in.
Hydrogen Cyanide: This chemical is the poison that is used in the gas chambers; it’s already recognized as a lethal substance. Although the dosage found in cigarettes is relatively small, hydrogen cyanide is still able to disable the filter system in your lungs by damaging the tiny hairs that usually prevent toxic substances from entering your lungs.
Benzene: This chemical was originally used in many industrial products, but has since been removed because of its high toxicity and additionally because it was linked to the cause of leukemic cancer within the body.
Formaldehyde: This chemical is generally used in the process of embalming, which is implicated to preserve dead bodies. Formaldehyde is additionally a substance that is also known to cause cancer.
Arsenic: Do you remember that ant problem you had last year? It was so bad that you had to put out ant traps, which definitely took care of the problem. Arsenic is the poisonous substance that is generally found in ant poison, and has the same effect on the inner tissues of your body as those poor ants – extermination.
Phosphorus: The inhalation of this chemical will cause severe damage to your body over time – prolonged phosphorous poisoning is associated with serious bone decay.
When you smoke a cigarette, you expose your lungs, bloodstream and organs to these eight chemicals, plus another three thousand nine hundred and ninety-two chemicals that haven’t been mentioned. If you ever needed a reason to quit smoking, just what you’re smoking might be the reason you’re looking for.
