The World Health Organization will address the effects of cigarettes in people's health and its damage to the environment through the World No Tobacco Day on May 31. This global effort is done in hopes to increase the level of awareness about cigarette smoking by talking about its damaging effects on the public's health and the environment.
Sante Philippines, the provider of premier organic health and wellness products and services, will help in promoting this advocacy by listing the major reasons why it is time to finally put out the cigarette and stop smoking.
Tobacco and cigarette smoking are connected with a wide variety of cancers, commonly affecting the lungs and the heart. The habit makes smokers vulnerable to numerous diseases because of particles that weaken their immune system.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease is a condition where the mucus in the lungs causes breathing difficulties. This is a result of long-term smoking. It is usually found in those who have started smoking cigarettes at an early age. Inhaling cigarette smoke also worsens tuberculosis and asthma.
Smoking can also affect non-smokers. When smokers' light cigarettes inside their houses, they endanger the health of family members, especially children, and infants. Tobacco smoke contains 7,000 chemicals, including hundreds that are toxic and about 70 that can cause cancer.
Since 1964, approximately 2,500,000 nonsmokers have died from health problems caused by exposure to secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke causes ear infections, frequent and severe asthma attacks, respiratory symptoms such as sneezing, coughing and shortness of breath, bronchitis, pneumonia and a greater risk for sudden infant death syndrome in children.
For adults who never smoked in their life, secondhand smoke can cause heart disease, lung cancer, and stroke.
Animals are also not immune to secondhand smoking and its harmful effects. Dogs and cats are also victims, as well as other pet animals. Felines are prone to developing a type of cancer called malignant lymphoma if they are exposed to cigarette smoke for a long time.
The production of tobacco and cigarettes have major harm to the environment because tobacco plantations are destroying the land. Tobacco production uses trees to create fire for drying tobacco leaves and for rolling and packing cigarettes. If they are not monitored, cigarettes may start forest fires, damaging the ozone layer further and destroying the homes of people and animals.
The procedures in making tobacco and cigarettes release toxic gases into the air. These air pollutants, such as carbon dioxide and methane, can negatively affect the earth's ozone layer.
