Cigarettes and Tobacco News

Nov 15, 2005, RAPID CITY, -- The long, white and brown-tipped cigarette, known to many people by many different names - ''coffin nail'' is only one - looks benign enough in the package or in between someone's fingers, smoke swirling off the tip.

That cigarette, cigar or pipe tobacco contains more than 40 known carcinogens.

Among those carcinogens are cadmium, also found in car batteries; ammonia, used in cleaning products; styrene, used in insulation; vinyl chloride, a product in garbage bags; benzene, or rubber cement; and acetone, nail polish remover, just to name a few.

Secondhand smoke

In addition to the health risk to adults, such as heart disease and lung cancer, children are most vulnerable.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, children are more vulnerable because they are still growing physically, have higher breathing rates than adults and have no control over their environment.

Secondhand smoke may cause asthma in children, they may suffer from pneumonia or bronchitis and infants may suffer sudden infant death syndrome.

Parents are 90 percent responsible for their children's exposure to secondhand smoke. On a national average, 11 percent of all children under the age of six are exposed to secondhand smoke. In Indian country, although actual statistics are not available, that percentage is much higher.

The risks

* Cigarette smoking is considered the cause of a tenfold increase in the risk of dying from chronic obstructive lung disease.

* Cigarette smoking has adverse reproductive and early childhood effects, including an increased risk for infertility, preterm delivery, stillbirth, low birth weight and SIDS.

* Postmenopausal women who smoke have a lower bone density than women who never smoked.

* Cigarette smokers are two to four times more likely to develop coronary heart disease than nonsmokers.

* Cigarette smoking doubles a person's risk for stroke.

* Cigarette smoking causes reduced circulation by narrowing the blood vessels.

* Cigarette smoking increases the risk for many types of cancer.