Health Effects of Smoking

You know smoking is bad for you, but do you know what this dangerous habit does to your body and to nonsmokers who inhale secondhand smoke?

         cigarette Smoking has disastrous consequences: It 

damages just about every organ of the body and leads to the general deterioration of the smoker's health. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that cigarette smoking is responsible for nearly one of every five deaths in the United States, or about 438,000 deaths every year. Cigarette smoking is deadlier on an annual basis than HIV/AIDS, motor vehicle crashes, drug abuse, alcoholism, suicide, and murder … combined.

Smoking and Cancer

Cancer was one of the first diseases that researchers linked to cigarette smoking, and it continues to be smoking's most notorious health effect. Cigarette smoking and tobacco use causes about one-third of all cancer deaths in the United States.

Lung cancer is most closely linked to cigarette smoking. Smoking causes nearly all lung cancer deaths in America, about 90 percent of male deaths and 80 percent of female deaths. The chances that a male smoker will die of lung cancer is 23 times that of someone who's never smoked, while women who smoke run a risk 13 times greater than non-smokers.

But lung cancer is far from the only form of cancer attributable to cigarette smoking. Researchers have also linked smoking to cancers of the bladder, larynx, mouth, throat, esophagus, pancreas, stomach, kidney, and cervix. Smoking also is a known cause of some forms of leukemia.