Cigarette - Health Issues

Health Issues

Nicotine, the primary psychoactive chemical in cigarettes, is addictive. Cigarette use by pregnant women has also been shown to cause birth defects (which include mental and physical disability). Some of the mineral apatite in Florida used to produce phosphate for U.S. tobacco crops contains uranium, radium, lead 210 and polonium 210 and radon. The radioactive smoke from tobacco fertilized this way is deposited in lungs and releases radiation even if a smoker quits the habit. The combination of carcinogenic tar and radiation in a sensitive organ such as lungs increases the risk of cancer.

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