Fag fact file

What smokers need to know...

Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, at least 50 of which cause cancer. Smoking dramatically increases your risk of lung cancer, heart disease, and over 50 other diseases including at least eight cancers, respiratory (breathing) diseases including asthma, stomach ulcers and psoriasis (dry, scaly skin). The carbon monoxide in smoke reduces your body’s oxygen supply so your lungs work less efficiently. Nicotine speeds up your body and constricts your blood vessels, and tar contains cancer-causing substances and damages your lungs.

It’s estimated that several hundred people a year die from lung cancer caused by second-hand smoke. It almost certainly contributes to deaths from heart disease – a bigger killer than lung cancer. Breathing other people’s smoke increases the risk of mouth and throat cancers and heart disease, and makes chest problems worse. Children exposed to smoking may suffer damaging effects such as serious respiratory illness, asthma and middle-ear disease. Second-hand smoke is also linked to sudden infant death syndrome (a doubling of risk). The Royal College of Physicians believes that up to 17,000 hospital admissions a year of children under five are due to their parents smoking. Women who smoke while pregnant are likely to reduce the birth weight, and damage the health, of their baby.

Decide to quit, set a date, and get help. If stop-smoking aids are used with an intensive NHS service, a smoker is up to four times more likely to give up successfully.