Cigarettes Cointain

What's in cigarettes? Do you know?

Tobacco smoke is a mixture of gases and small particles composed of water, tar and nicotine. The tar is a messy mixture of hundreds of toxic chemicals, many of which are known to cause cancer (eg, nitrosamines, benzpyrene).

Lot of gas in tobacco smoke are harmful. These include carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanide, ammonia and other toxic irritants such as formaldehyde and acrolein. Due to high temperatures (above 800 ° C or 1400 ° F), the burning of a cigarette is like a miniature chemical factory. It offers many other harmful chemicals found in tobacco off or supported by the use of smokeless tobacco (eg snuff, which contains no tar or gas). In total, over 4,000 chemical compounds have been identified in tobacco smoke.

The chemicals that cause cancer are mainly in the tar. Tar, with a little 'annoying, it can also be partly responsible for chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Nitrogen oxides are suspected, but the main agents responsible are not yet known. Neither carbon monoxide or nicotine causes cancer, but they are probably working together as causes of heart disease associated with smoking.

It is easy to understand why the main cancers caused by smoking are at sites having direct contact with the smoke, specifically the lungs, mouth, and throat. However, some cancer-producing chemicals are absorbed into the blood and transported to other parts of the body. This is how smoking causes cancer of the bladder, kidney, pancreas, and uterus.

The way in which smoking causes heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases is quite complex.

* After absorption through the lungs, carbon monoxide combines with hemoglobin in the red blood cells and reduces the amount of oxygen they can carry around the body.
* Carbon monoxide and nicotine both appear to play a part in accelerating the deposition of cholesterol in the inner lining of arteries which over many years leads to arteriosclerosis, a kind of hardening and furring up of arteries which reduces blood flow.
* Cigarette smoking also makes the blood clot more easily, making episodes of thrombosis more likely.
* Impairment of blood flow, and of oxygen-carrying capacity due to carbon monoxide, all reduce the supply of oxygen. This happens at the same time that the heart's need for oxygen is increased by the stimulant effect of nicotine on the rate and force of the heart's contractions.
* The lack of oxygen is damaging to the heart and increases the severity of a heart attack.
* Nicotine can cause further problems by upsetting the regular rhythm of the heart.

Nicotine and carbon monoxide are also important factors in peripheral vascular disease, which can lead to gangrene of the feet. Nicotine causes constriction, or narrowing, of the small blood vessels. This, combined with carbon monoxide's oxygen-reducing effect, tips the balance in people with narrowed leg arteries.

Likewise, nicotine constriction of blood vessels in the placenta (which provides nourishment to an unborn baby), combined with the effects of carbon monoxide, reduces oxygen supply to the unborn babies of pregnant women who smoke.

In these various ways both nicotine and carbon monoxide are involved in the effects of smoking on coronary heart disease, other vascular diseases, and on the development of the unborn child. Although stopping smoking may not reverse arteriosclerosis, a disease in which plaque builds up in the arteries, it will progress less quickly.