DEVILSMOKE FACTFILE-4

 

Did You Know?

 

• The battle of smoking heated up in 1994, the 30th anniversary of the day cigarette packages started carrying the Surgeon General's warning.

• Smoking is related to about 419,000 deaths each year - American Cancer Society

• Second hand smoke can cause up to 3,000 lung-cancer deaths a year and 30,000 deaths from heart disease. From the Environmental Protection Agency.

• The Environmental Protection Agency says that : - burning tobacco is a cancer causing agent- smoke rising off a burning cigarette contains levels of 17 carcinogens (More dangerous than smoke the smoker inhales.)- tobacco also causes 12,000 non-lung cancer deaths in adults, 30,000 bronchitis and pneumonia cases in children under the age 18 months, and 8,000 to 26,000 cases of asthma in children each year.

• The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that : cigarette smoke is responsible for more deaths each year than ones caused by AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, cocaine, crack, heroin, fires, homicide, and suicide combined.

• Only 599 chemicals of the 700 that are really there were made public by tobacco companies. The rest were trade secrets. Eight of these concerned the FDA. they are methoprene (an insecticide), ammonia, ethyl furoate, and five food additives. Information provided by : Food and Drug Administration.

• 700 chemical additives are added to cigarettes, including pesticides, insecticides, and 13 additives that are inedible. Reported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

• INFACT says that : More than 300 teens in the U.S. become smokers every day.

• People that work in sit-down restaurants that allow smoking face a 300-500% exposure rate than the average citizen in a smoking office. That is equivalent to smoking one and a half to two packs of cigarettes a day.

• Nicotine has a poisonous insecticide manufactured by the tobacco plant. Insects that eat the leaves of that plant die, because the poison jams their communication system. Humans are bigger and it takes 60mg of nicotine to have the same effect. The average cigarette contains 1mg of nicotine.

• Studies say African Amricans die from lung and throat cancer at a higher rate than whites.

• China is the world's leading producer of tobacco.

• Tobacco contains over 4,000 different chemicals.

• Large doses of nicotine can cause a decrease in the production of urine.

• The single largest preventable cause of premature death and disability in the United States is smoking.

• The costs for medical cost for smoking related illnesses is $22 billion.

• The economy losses $44 billion from lost productivity.

• Once nicotine reaches the lungs, its effects reach the brain within six seconds - twice as fast as mainlining heroin.

• Low tar and nicotine smokers have a mortality rate 16% lower than that of high tar and nicotine smokers.

• At least 12 million people in the United States use smokeless tobacco, half of them are regular users.

• Second-hand smoke causes about 2,400 lung cancer deaths a year.

• Studies show that non-smoking wives with smoking husbands have a 35% higher risk of lung cancer opposed to women with husbands who don't smoke.

• Five people die of smoking related deaths every six seconds.

• Children are twice as likely to become smokers if they grow up in homes with parents who smoke.

• Smoking causes 30% of all cancer deaths.

• The five year survival rate for lung cancer is 10%

• A pregnant woman who smokes two packs a day blocks off the equivalent of 25% of the oxygen supply to the fetus.

• Expecting mothers who smoke experience more stillbirths, spontaneous abortions, premature births, and low weight babies than that of expecting mothers that don't smoke.

• Cigarette smoking causes 75% of lung cancer cases among women, 85% among men, and 83% overall.

• There are many smoking sites on the Internet. Click here to visit one maintained by the Boston University Medical Center's COHIS program.

• Click here to visit other tobacco related Internet sites.