Smoking and Lung Disease

Smoking Lung Cancer Risk

If you're a smoker, you probably already know that smoking raises your risk of getting lung cancer and that smoking causes several other lung diseases. The goal of this article is to give the smoker information about smoking lung cancer risk, and also describe how tobacco smoke contributes to other lung diseases.

In the last 25 years, smoking has declined as a whole in the United States. There was a commensurate decline in the lung cancer death rate for men and the death rate for women has leveled off.

Smoking were first identified as lung cancer risk almost a century ago, when lung cancer accounted for only 1 cancer in every 100 cases in the U.S. But it wasn't until the early 1960's that the link generated much public attention, resulting in the famous warning issued by the Surgeon General.

A smoker inhaling a puff from a cigarette draws almost 5000 chemicals into his or her lungs. 69 of these are carcinogenic (cancer causing). There are two chemicals that are especially high risk. They are nitrosamines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Smoking-related lung cancer accounts for approximately 130,000 deaths a year. Lung cancer is known to be responsible for more cancer deaths than colon cancer, breast cancer, and prostate cancer combined. 4 out of 5 patients who have lung cancer survive less than five years.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 9 out of 10 lung cancer deaths are directly attributable to smoking along with at least 4 of every five cases of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). The CDC also believes more than 8 million people suffer from a serious disease associated with smoking.

Your risk of getting lung cancer or some other lung disease drops when you quit smoking. But even among smokers who have quit, chronic lung disease accounts for 50 percent of smoking-related conditions.

A smoker is also more likely to have non-lung related diseases like coronary artery disease and stroke. Stomach ulcers have also been linked to tobacco smoke.

A pregnant woman who smokes has a higher risk of delivering a low-birth weight baby. 1 of every 10 infant deaths may be connected to a smoking mother. Even babies who appear to be healthy are often found to have narrowed airways and reduced lung function. When you total up the statistics for annual medical care costs attributable to maternal smoking in the United States, it surpasses 350 million dollars a year.

Passive smoke exposure and lung diseases Children with a smoker in the family who are exposed to passive smoke are less likely to be healthy. Asthma occurs more often, as do colds and ear infections. A nonsmoker who lives with a smoker has a 24 percent higher risk of getting lung cancer than someone who is not exposed to passive smoke.

In the United States, passive smoke exposure causes about three thousand deaths a year from lung cancer.

Your lungs begin to repair damage done by smoke when you quit smoking. Your risk of contracting lung cancer goes down as time passes. But it takes years - perhaps 20 or more, depending on how long you were a smoker - for the risk to drop to the same level as someone who has never smoked.

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