Do you actually know why smoking is bad?

Radioactive smoke

Puff by puff, cigarettes release polonium 210 to the lungs, if you smoke half packet a day it would be the equivalent radiation dosage of 300 chest x-rays a year. Wait, What? How does polonium 210 ends up in cigarettes? It's a by-product of how tobacco plants are being cultured by tobacco companies. Most of fertilizers contain elevated levels of radioactive isotopes, and obviously to be competitive, tobacco companies use plenty of fertilizers to grow tobacco plants quickly. As I've discussed in a recent post, plants can retain traces amounts of heavy metals and radiation from the environment that surrounds them. Not only they can retain polonium 210 from their fertilizers, but the combustion process of cigarettes releases 100% of the polonium directly into the lungs. 

Obviously a single cigarette isn't going to kill you, but we all know that smoking is an addiction, and rarely people stop at few cigarettes per day, most people I know smoke even a package a day easily. Something upsetting is that tobacco companies have known about the issue of radioactive smoke for years, and it would take very little for them to get rid of the problem while still using fertilizers. In fact, it was found that about 50% of the polonium could easily be removed from the fertilizer and simply washing the tobacco leaves with hydrogen peroxide could eliminate another 25% of the polonium from cigarettes. So why don't they do it? Simple, there would be no commercial advantage in including this simple steps, plus if they were to introduce them, tobacco companies would be forced to admit that the issue of radioactive smoke exists. 

There is another harmful aspect, which is the accumulation of cesium and cadmium in the tobacco leaves. Low amounts of these elements are not dangerous, but prolonged exposure and accumulation of cesium in the lungs can lead to cancer. 

Moreover, smoking is a self-perpetuating problem, have you ever noticed that smokers tend to cough quite a bit? Well it turns out that prolonged exposure to smoke can paralyze and shorten the cilia  (full research article here). In healthy individuals cilia sweeps mucus and dirt out of the lungs. Instead, in pathological lungs, the reduced function of cilia not only prevents the effective elimination of contaminants from the lung, but it could even make it more difficult, prolonging the exposure of lung tissue to particles present in the smoke. 

We all know smoke is bad, yet 1.3 million people worldwide still die of lung cancer every year, 90% of which because of smoking. Lung cancer it's probably the most horrible way to die, don't pick up the smoke addiction.