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Lesson Nine: Smoking and Health
Suggested teaching Methodology: Lecture, Group work, Debate, and Project work.
As a class activity, let the students make chart about substances that are known to cause lung diseases. Most of them will know that cigarette smoke and air pollution cause different lung diseases and lung cancer. There are many Smoking-related diseases. The Major tobacco-related diseases include cancer, heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. Smoking causes other several diseases and lesions in the mouth, the most common being gum disease. The chance of dental implant failure is also more common among smokers than non-smokers.
N.B The longer you've been smoking, and the more you smoke, the greater your risk of getting lung cancer.
Parents who smoke put their children at greater risk of developing asthma. Smoking in pregnancy, including exposure to secondhand smoke from the father or other family members and friends, increases the risk of the child developing asthma. If a child already has asthma, exposure to cigarette smoke will provoke more frequent and more severe asthma attacks.
Smoking or being exposed to tobacco smoke, either before or during pregnancy is associated with a range of poor pregnancy outcomes, including reduced fertility, an increased risk of pregnancy complications and impaired infant and child development.
What are the chemicals and the addictive substance in cigarette smoke/tobacco?
Many chemicals in tobacco smoke are poisonous. The major chemicals in tobacco smoke are nicotine, tar and carbon monoxide.
Nicotine is the addictive substance in tobacco that causes smokers to continue their smoking habit. Along with nicotine, smokers also inhale about 4,000 other chemicals. These chemicals harm nearly every organ in the body.
Apart from these, the cigarettes contain many other chemicals. Some of these are irritants. Irritants and chemicals that annoy the lungs. Other chemicals are carcinogens; may cause cancer. The smoke produced by the cigarettes is very harmful; it affects the epithelium in two ways: it irritates the goblet cells, making them produce more mucus. Secondly, it slows down, or even stops the beating of the cilia, so that they can no longer sweep out the mucus. Coughing can only clear the buildup of mucus in the lungs. This is known as smoker’s cough.
Some diseases caused by cigarettes are bronchitis, emphysema and lung cancer.
Bronchitis: is a condition where epithelium is damaged and destroyed by the cigarettes’ smoke and irritants. Germs and irritants penetrate deeper into the lung tissue and so the body’s defence cell move into attack. Their remains, along with the mucus make up phlegm, which must be coughed and spat every day. Bronchitis causes more than a 1000 deaths every year and it is a disease, which mostly causes loss of workdays.
What is passive Smoking?
If someone is smoking, then the smoke they blow out into the air can be breathed in by anyone who is near to the smoker. Research evidences on the health effects of passive smoking showed that passive smoking causes lower respiratory illness in children and lung cancer in adults and contributes to the symptoms of asthma in children. The review also estimated that the risk of heart attack or death from coronary heart disease was 24% higher in non-smokers living with a smoker [Source: The health effects of passive smoking: a scientific information paper. Canberra: National Health and Medical Research Council; 1997].
Fig. 9.1: Smoking and its effects
Second-hand smoke is a danger to everyone, but children, pregnant women and the partners of smokers are most vulnerable. Passive smoking increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS or cot death), middle ear disease, asthma, respiratory illnesses, lung cancer and coronary heart disease. Whenever people smoke, all the others around them are smoking too because they breathe in or inhale the same harmful substances as the person who is smoking.
Is smoking of cigarette increasing? Or decreasing in Ethiopia?
Let the students discuss the issue of cigarette smoking, the health effects of smoking, and the attitudes young people in Ethiopia towards cigarette smoking.
Let the students’ debate on smoking by raising the following questions.
Let the students visit a local health station and contact health personnel. They should ask the harmful effects of smoking. They can also collect material on this topic from other sources. Let they try to get information about the percentage of people in their locality who smoke.
Finally, let the students prepare a group report to the class.