I believe smoking is a hazard to not only the people who smoke, but the people
around them. When I walk downstairs in my own house I walk into a room where smoke
attacks me and my lungs. Then I end up having that awful stench follow me everywhere.
Smoking doesn't only make people look bad, but it effects their bodies internally in
negative ways.
First of all, smoking can cause many life-threatening diseases. When you smoke,
the effects on your body are immediate. Your pulse increases and your breathing
becomes faster and more shallow. Plus your circulation begins to drop. Before you
know it, you will have heart disease. Also, cigarettes contain many cancer-causing
substances, which hits your lungs and will leave you with lung cancer, another
life-threatening disease.
Along with harming yourself, you harm many others. Just like smokers, a
non-smoker breathing second-hand smoke is exposed to roughly 3, 700 different
chemicals. Many of them can be poisonous; others are powerful cancer-causing
substances, such as formaldehyde. The more second-hand smoke you breath, the greater
risk of a heart attack or stroke, and the greater risk of lung cancer.
Although smoking effects people's health, it also effects the way they look. The
skin is effected in at least two ways. Firstly, tobacco smoke has a drying effect on the
skin's surface. Secondly, since smoking restricts blood vessels, it reduces the amount of
blood flowing to the skin which decreases the skin of oxygen and essential nutrients.
Since these two things happen, the skin gets damaged which makes it have a grayish,
wasted appearance. Besides smoking effecting the appearance of skin, it also effects the
color of your teeth and the smell of your breath. Your teeth gradually change to an icky
gray color and your breath wreaks of odor which could lead people away from you.
People who smoke are increasing their chances for death, bad looks, and to harm
the health of others. Today, many people are beginning to realize the hazards of smoking
and make the wise decision to quit. I just hope that others in the future will look at the
facts before they decide to take their first puff. They won't realize it at the time, but they
could be saving their life at that very moment.