Failure to eradicate smoking will result in 1 billion deaths in next century
By Don Asoka Wijewardena
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that unless the smoking habit is eradicated, tobacco will kill one billion people in the 21st century.
Of one billion smokers 80 per cent are found in the developing countries, including Asia, which includes Sri Lanka, the Health Education Bureau revealed at a media conference held on World Heart Day.
Consultant Cardiologist Dr. Gamini Galappaththi said, in Sri Lanka around 20,000 people died each year due to smoking and smoking-related diseases. Those who indulged in the habit of smoking would release smoke from their lungs into the environment and others too, would inhale the smoke.
He pointed out that the deadly poison that tobacco smoke contained passes from the lungs into the blood stream of those who inhaled it.
If a pregnant mother inhaled this secondhand smoke some of the poisons in the smoke she inhales would reach her unborn baby through her blood stream.
There were more than 4000 chemicals in tobacco smoke and of these around 50 had been proved to be carcinogenic. It meant that the chemicals were capable of causing cancer in various organs of the body.
He added that tobacco smoke contained nicotine, DDT, Arsenic, Carbon Monoxide, Hydrogen, Cyanide, Cadmium and Formaldehyde and these substances were commercially used to make a substance to kill cockroachers.
There was evidence that cadmium might be the poison that was causing serious kidney disease in the North Central Province.
The Island
