The Smoking Facts on Emphysema
and
Other Lung Diseases Caused by Smoking

The smoking facts on emphysema are indisputable. The damaging effects of smoking cigarettes are what causes emphysema.

Other lung diseases caused by smoking include lung cancer, spontaneous pneumothorax, and chronic bronchitis. Other respiratory effects of smoking cigarettes include blood clots in your lungs.

All of the lung diseases caused by smoking have the potential to be fatal.

Breath is life - if you cannot breathe you die and that is a smoking fact!

Cigarette smoke is meant to be inhaled into your lungs. It should come as no surprise that some of the most harmful effects of smoking cigarettes occur in the respiratory passages and the lungs.

The delicate tissue of the air passages and lungs are burned by hot smoke and gases, coated in cigarette tar, and bathed many times per day in the all various chemicals contained in a cigarette including radioactive elements such as polonium-210 and carcinogens such as benzene and arsenic.

Smoking Facts on Emphysema

Emphysema results from the long term effects of smoking cigarettes. Damage to the lungs caused by the inhalation of the smoke and cigarette tar occurs over time.

One of the major damaging effects of smoking is the paralysis and destruction of the cilia.

This is how emphysema starts.

Lung anatomy includes the presence of tiny structures called cilia in the air passages. They are tiny hair like structures and their main function is sweeping the airways to keep them clean of mucus and debris.

Without cilia in constant motion, mucous and other debris will build up and clog the air passages.

One of the effects of smoking cigarettes is the destruction and paralysis of the cilia. Because the cilia can no longer sweep the air passages clean, cigarette tar and other debris in cigarette smoke cannot be removed from the lungs. More and more debris and mucus builds up in the lungs setting the stage for infection.

Smokers are more likely to develop acute bronchitis because of this destruction of the normal protective mechanism in the lungs. Several acute bronchitis episodes will cause even more damage that cannot be repaired and eventually you end up with chronic bronchitis.

Smoking is the main cause of 80% of chronic bronchitis cases. When chronic bronchitis progresses to emphysema the result is called COPD or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Smoking Facts on Other Lung Diseases Caused by Smoking

• Your lungs hold on to 85 to 99% of almost all of the things you inhale including all of the toxic and carcinogenic ingredients in cigarettes. Over 90% of lung cancer cases are the direct or indirect effects of smoking cigarettes. Many people develop lung cancer as a result of secondhand smoking


• Smoking makes your blood more prone to blood clot formation inside the veins of the legs. When one of those gets loose and travels though the circulation it can get lodged in the lungs. Blood clots in the lungs are called pulmonary emboli. They can be fatal.


• a spontaneous pneumothorax means a collapsed lung that occurs without any specific or identifiable cause of injury or air leakage into the chest cavity. Smoking has been identified as a risk factor.

The main facts on emphysema and other lung diseases caused by smoking are that smoking is damaging to your lungs and your airways. It can cause permanent and fatal damage.

The effects of smoking cigarettes on the lungs is bad enough but what affects the lungs has the potential for adverse effects on the heart as well and vice versa.

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