Tobacco & Cancer

tobacco

According to Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS)
• Current tobacco use in India is 34.6% in adults; 47.9% males and 20.3 % females
• Among minors (15 – 17 years of age) , 9.6% consumed tobacco in some form or other and were able to procure it without any difficulty
• 5 in 10 adults (52.3%) were exposed to second hand smoke at home and 29.0% at public places

Form of Tobacco

Tobacco-form

Tobacco & Cancer

Over 4000 chemical compounds are created by burning a cigarette – 69 of those chemicals are known carcinogens. A carcinogen is something that causes cancer.

Three of the most widely known chemicals are nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide.

Nicotine is a potent carcinogen and is the main ingredient in insecticides or bug sprays. In its pure form, just one drop on a person’s tongue would kill him/her.

Tar is the oily material which remains after tobacco passes through the filter. When a smoker inhales, a lot of the tar sticks to and blackens the lungs.

Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas. A smoker inhales this gas which is also found in the exhaust of a car. This gas interferes with our respiratory (breathing) and circulatory (heart, arteries, and veins) systems.

Smokers die not only of lung cancer but also of cancers of the mouth, larynx (throat)(84 – 85%), esophagus, bladder, kidney, cervix, and blood (leukemia)(40 – 60 % in men and 20 – 30% in women). 87% of all lung cancers are caused by smoking.

Those who use tobacco that they put in their mouth are at greatest risk for mouth cancer. Mouth cancer is one of the most common cancers in India due to the use of tobacco.

tobacco and cancer

Tobacco in any form is nothing less than suicide. Easy, smooth, slow and painless? Ask someone with terminal cancer about the pains so bad that it needs nothing less than morphine tablets to make it barely bearable…..

No single thing has been proven to cause so much damage as tobacco and nothing else even comes close to being as a definitive preventable cause for cancer…..

youtube-subscribe

6,744 thoughts on “Tobacco & Cancer”