Smoke & Ash

A study led by Dr Michael Thun and published in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that women who smoke are at far greater risk of dying now than they were in the 1960s. This appears to be due to the current generation of women smoking more cigarettes and starting to smoke at a younger age. The study, based on 2 million American women, reported that the changes in women’s smoking habits over the last 50 years has brought women’s risk of lung cancer and resultant death rates up to the same level as men’s. These findings were reported in a number of news media including Science Daily.

According to a study published in The Lancet, based on more than a million women in the UK, lifelong smokers died a decade earlier than those who never started. Women who give up smoking by the age of 30 will almost completely avoid the risks of dying early from tobacco-related diseases. Lead Researcher Prof Sir Richard Peto, at Oxford University, said "If women smoke like men, they die like men."

An additional fact noted in the American study is that smokers who switched to cigarettes labelled as ‘light’ or 'mild' may have made the situation worse because the smoke had to be breathed in more deeply to achieve the nicotine levels of standard cigarettes. Those labels are now banned.

Just a few of the chemicals in cigarettes:

• Nicotine - immediate physiological effects include increased heart rate and a rise in blood pressure
• Ammonia - also found in toilet cleaners
• Acetone - found in nail varnish remover
• Cadmium - a highly poisonous metal used in batteries
• Vinyl chloride - used to make PVC
• Napthtalene - used in moth balls
• Carbon monoxide - poisonous gas that is commonly given off by exhausts and gas fires, fatal in large amounts
• Tar - thick brown stuff in cigarette smoke that stains fingers and teeth a yellow-brown colour and which deposits in a smoker's lungs, clogging them up
• Cyanide - a lethal gas used in Second World War gas chambers
• Formaldehyde - used to preserve dead bodies
• Arsenic - poison