Question: can you get cancer just from inhaling smoke from a cigarette regularly

Sarah Thomas answered on 21 Mar 2011:

Yes inhaling smoke increases your chances of getting cancer.

Smoking is the single biggest cause of cancer in the world, and accounts for one in four UK cancer deaths.

In the UK, smoking kills five times more people than road accidents, overdoses, murder, suicide and HIV all put together.

Smoking causes nine in ten cases of lung cancer. Lung cancer has one of the lowest survival rates of all cancers, and is the most common cause of cancer death in the UK. The good news is that most of these deaths are preventable, by giving up smoking in time.

Smoking also increases your risk of mouth and throat cancer.

Years of research have proven that smoking causes cancer. But this doesn’t mean that all smokers will definitely get cancer or that all non-smokers won’t. It means that smoking greatly increases the risk of this disease. Smokers are, on average, much more likely to get cancer than non-smokers. The fact is that half of all smokers eventually die from cancer, or other smoking-related illnesses.

Tobacco smoke contains at least 80 different cancer-causing substances. When you inhale smoke, these chemicals enter your lungs and spread around the rest of your body.

Scientists have shown that these chemicals can damage DNA and change important genes. This causes cancer by making your cells grow and multiply out of control.

It’s just not worth it!