Smoking's Effect on the Lungs

Smoking negatively affects every organ in your body, especially the lungs. As soon as you inhale, the nicotine in tobacco enters your lungs and directly affects them for 30 minutes. Smoking damages cilia, the tiny structures that move oxygen in cells through blood, causing less oxygen to reach parts of your body. Air sacs in the lungs are destroyed as soon as smoke enters them. Related diseases along with lack of oxygen eventually destroy your lungs.

Diseases

• Smoking causes diseases such as emphysema, bronchitis, asthma, pneumonia, cancer and tuberculosis that prevent oxygen from reaching blood vessels and organs. This eventually destroys your lungs.

Test Results

• Smoking can affect the results of diagnostic tests. Pulmonary function tests for the lungs are often inaccurate in smokers.

Considerations

• Tar plugs bronchial tubes near air sacs. The moisture in the lungs makes tar cling to them, and the lungs try to clear the tubes, causing smokers to cough. When the tar can't be removed, air sacs collapse.

Significance

• Tobacco contains substances that are poisonous to the lungs. Carbon deposits discolor lung tissue and change the shape of your lungs so that you can't exhale. Inability to exhale makes it difficult to inhale, leading to shortness of breath and wheezing.

Secondhand Smoke

• Smoking doesn't affect just smokers. Inhaling someone else's cigarette smoke can cause lung cancer, heart disease and other illnesses, according to a November 1999 study of secondhand smoke by the American Cancer Society. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 3,000 nonsmokers a year die of lung cancer caused by secondhand smoke.

Effects on Children

• The Environmental Protection Agency warns that babies' lungs are too small to tolerate smoke and being around smokers makes it hard for them to breathe. Tar and nicotine in smoking mothers' breast milk is passed to babies, and sudden infant death syndrome and respiratory illness increase in children exposed to smoke.