Logan Hutchinson
2nd Period
September 3, 2013
Affects of Cigarettes Today, everyone knows that smoking cigarettes is bad for a person's health. Cigarette smoke contains over 4,800 chemicals, and 69 of those chemicals are known to cause cancer. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), about 440,000 people die per year from smoking, or smoke related reasons. Why would anyone willingly start smoking when they know it is very bad for his or her health? Yet, approximately 44 million people smoke in the United States. Each day nearly 4,000 teenagers try a cigarette, and 1,000 of them become new smokers. Smoking causes many types of health problems, and it can also affect personal hygiene. Smoking can harm nearly every organ in the body. It causes heart disease, stroke, asthma, hip fractures by weakening the bones, and cataracts just to name a few. Some people had to have body parts amputated due to smoking. Plus, smoking cigarettes is the leading cause of cancer and death from cancer. Lung and esophagus cancer are just two types. Elder persons who have smoked for most of their lives usually end up losing the function of their lungs. Air sacks are depleted and makes it hard to breathe. For example, my uncle smoked for more than 20 years. His lungs were so filled with tar that he could barely breathe, so the doctors had to give him a tank of oxygen to help. When the doctors told him if he didn’t stop smoking, he wouldn’t be around to see his grandchildren. He promptly tried to stop smoking, but every once in awhile he would turn off his oxygen tank to smoke. Eventually, he ended up with throat cancer and had a tube placed at the base of his throat that he had to breathe through. After this procedure, he finally was able to quit smoking. Not only does smoking cause terrible health problems, it also affects a person's hygiene.

Smoking is bad for a person's appearance and hygiene. Most everyone can tell whether a person standing next to him or