Health Hazards Of Tobacco: Facts

Those whom are still in the dark and unaware about tobacco and its deadly carcinogenic consequences should rent the Insider film DVD and see for themselves what a greedy, criminal, soulless bastards the nation-less tobacco companies executives truly are?

• Smokers and non-smokers alike often do not fully appreciate the health risks of tobacco use, particularly cigarette smoking. The latest epidemiological studies indicate that death rates for smokers are two to three times higher than for non-smokers at all ages. This means that half of all smokers will eventually die as a result of their smoking. If current smoking trends persist, about 500 million people currently alive, nearly 9% of the world's population, will eventually die as a result of tobacco.
• People who die from tobacco use do not die only in old age. About half of all smokers who are killed by tobacco die in middle age. On average, these smokers who die in middle age lose about 20-25 years of life expectancy.

About half of all tobacco-related deaths occur at ages 35-69 years, making tobacco the most important cause of premature death in developed countries.

• Many of those who die from smoking were not particularly heavy smokers, but most of them did start smoking in their teenage years.
• Smokers in their thirties and forties have five times as many heart attacks as non-smokers. Heart attacks are the main way in which smoking kills young tobacco users. In industrialized countries, tobacco is responsible for 75-80% of all heart attack deaths in young smokers under the age of 50.

"No single factor could have as much impact on the rising toll of cardiovascular deaths around the world as tobacco cessation".

• Lower tar cigarettes do not substantially reduce the risk of heart attack in smokers.
• In the 1990s, smoking is estimated to be the cause of one in five male deaths from cardiovascular diseases in developed countries (and about 6% of female CVD deaths).
• Smoking causes about 30% of all cancer deaths in developed countries (40-45% of male cancer deaths, and 10-15% of female cancer deaths). On average, about 90-95% of male lung cancer deaths in developed countries, and 70-75% of female lung cancer deaths, are due to smoking.
• If all tobacco-caused cancer deaths could be eliminated, then death rates from other causes of cancer for men and women would be similar in different industrialized countries and would have shown a stable, or even slightly declining trend over the last three or four decades.
• In 1995, WHO estimates that smoking was the cause of about 1.44 million male deaths in developed countries, and 475 000 female deaths in these countries. This represents one in four male deaths and about 10% of female deaths.
• Between 1950 and 2000, tobacco will have been the cause of over 60 million deaths in the developed countries (52 million men, 10 million women).

By the end of the 20th century, cigarette smoking will have killed about 62 million people in developed countries: 52 million men, 10 million women.

• Smoking is already causing about one-sixth of all deaths in developed countries. This proportion is still rising, mainly due to the increasing epidemic among women. If the proportion stays at or about one-sixth, then at least one-sixth of the population will eventually be killed by tobacco. This means that about 200 million out of the 1.2 billion people living in developed countries will eventually be killed by tobacco.
• People substantially underestimate the risks of smoking. In populations, where tobacco use has been common for several decades (e.g., men in the USA and the UK), tobacco is likely to be the most important risk of death in middle age. For example, in the United Kingdom, on average, among 1000 20-year-olds who smoke cigarettes regularly:
  
  
  • about one will die from homicide (murder) before age 70
  • about six will die from motor vehicle accidents before age 70
  • and about 250 will die from smoking before age 70 (plus about another 250 deaths from smoking after age 70).
• In the United States, where homicide and accidents are more common, the risks would be about six per 1000 from homicide, 12 per 1000 from traffic crashes, and 250 per 1000 from smoking (all before age 70).
• In the United States, it has been estimated that the annual risk of death from smoking is about 7000 per million smokers, more than ten times the risk from alcohol consumption (541 per million drinkers), 60 times the risk of work-related fatalities, over 1000 times the risk of death from air pollutants and 3500 times the risk of electrocution.

• Tobacco’s deadly hazardous never ends. From the moment one buys a pack of cigarettes the deadly cycle begins. Aside from the smoke itself, cigarette butts / filters are also highly carcinogenic and not biodegradable at all, billions of them washed up from streets and sidewalks, ending up in our oceans, one of the most commonly found environmentally hazardous crap in the oceans we do not need. One may look at a little cigarette butt / filter in one’s hand not thinking much of it, but as they begin to accumulate from all over the world pouring into our oceans it adds up to an staggering number: over 2 billion tons of it poisoning fish and our environment.
• The mind boggling 2 billion tons of cigarette butts / filters thrown on the ground annually by ordinary people not knowing and not thinking about where they are going to end up. Smokers must be helped and woken up to this reality that not only they are killing themselves they are taking the rest of us with them. It is time to save our fellow cigarette smoking citizens, in order to save our one and only home Planet Earth, and the wildlife we desperately need to survive, which are already dying from the nicotine’s residue of over few hundred deadly chemicals left behind when burning tobacco plus the toxicants concentrated in cigarette butts / filters.

Smoking Trends

• Cigarettes consumption in developing countries has been rising among men over the last three or four decades. In some developing countries, the health effects of this increase in tobacco use are already evident. For example, in China, smoking is estimated to be the cause of at least half a million deaths a year, mostly men (per capita cigarette consumption in China has increased almost four-fold since the early 1970s).
• Most smokers live in developing countries. Of the 1.1 billion smokers in the world in the early 1990s, 800 million (70-75%) live in the developing world.
• In developing countries 50% of men smoke (plus about 8% of women). The proportions for men and women in the developed countries are 41% and 21% respectively.
• In developed countries the proportion of female deaths in middle age due to smoking has increased six-fold since 1955, rising from 2% to 13% by 1995.
• Per capita consumption is falling in the developed countries at about 1.5% per year, but rising in developing countries at about 1.7% per year. As a result, it is projected that per capita (adult) cigarette consumption in the developing world will exceed consumption in developed countries within the next decade.

PASSIVE SMOKING

• Passive smoking is a cause of additional episodes and increased severity of symptoms in asthmatic children. Asthmatic children are up to 2.5 times more likely to have their condition worsened by passive smoking. In the United States alone it is estimated that 200 000 to one million asthmatic children have their condition worsened by passive smoking.
• Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS or "passive smoking") is a risk factor for new cases of asthma in children who have not previously displayed symptoms.
• The risk of lower respiratory tract diseases (such as croup, bronchitis and pneumonia) is estimated to be about 50-60% higher in children exposed to ETS during the first 1-2 years of life, compared with unexposed children. About 10-15% of lower respiratory tract disease in young children under 18 months of age is attributable to passive smoking.
• In children, exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is causally associated with increased prevalence of fluid in the middle ear, symptoms of upper respiratory tract irritation, and a small but significant reduction in lung function.
• Environmental tobacco smoke is a cause of lung cancer in lifelong non-smokers exposed to ETS. Epidemiological studies carried out in several countries suggest that the lung cancer risk is about 20-30% higher than for never smokers not exposed to ETS.

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  COMMITMENT TO THE TOBACCO-FREE PROMOTION OF SPORTS AND CULTURE

  In the light of the consequences for health associated with the use of tobacco and its derivative, and desirous of helping to improve the quality of life,

  I undertake not to promote the use of tobacco and its derivatives in connection with sports and/or cultural events.

  Organizers of sports and/or cultural events and the officers of sports and cultural associations who make this
  COMMITMENT
  and apply it in their work are authorized to use the logo of the "Tobacco or Health" program of the World Health Organization in association with World No-Tobacco Day, 31 May 1996, which will take as its theme
  "Sport and the arts without tobacco"
  . The use of the official logo commits users not to receive a financial or other contribution from tobacco manufacturers in any form whatsoever and not to undertake any promotion for tobacco by any direct or indirect allusion to this substance and its derivatives.