Click pic to read about a mother who lets her 3yr old smoke
Another reason not to smoke, as if you needed more.
The tobacco in cigarettes hosts a bacterial bonanza — literally hundreds of different germs, including those responsible for many human illnesses, a new study finds.
“Nearly every paper that you pick up discussing the health effects of cigarettes starts out with something to the effect that smokers and people exposed to secondhand smoke experience high rates of respiratory infections,” notes Amy Sapkota of the University of Maryland. The presumption has been that smoking renders people vulnerable to disease by impairing lung function or immunity. And it may well do both.
“But nobody talks about cigarettes as a source of those infections,” she says. Her new data now suggest that’s distinctly possible.
If these germs are alive, something she has not yet been confirmed, just handling cigarettes or putting an unlit one to the mouth could be enough to cause an infection.
Cancer cures smoking…
Bah, humbug. /cough
Why is anyone still waisting time and money looking for more reasons why cigarettes are bad for you? We get it already.
Lets just assume that if you smoke a single cigarette in your life that you are guaranteed to die a horrible lung spitting death before you’re fifty.
From the article – “Among the large number of germs whose DNA laced these cigarettes were: Campylobacter, which can cause food poisoning and Guillain-Barre Syndrome; Clostridium, which causes food poisoning and pneumonias; Corynebacterium, also associated with pneumonias and other diseases; E. coli; Klebsiella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, all of which are associated with not only pneumonia but also urinary tract infections; and a number of Staphylococcus species that underlie the most common and serious hospital-associated infections.”
My lord! You would think that smokers across the country would be flooding the Emergency Rooms at every hospital. Apparently, that is not the case. We’ll have to chalk this one up as “BUSTED”.
Hey Kiddies:
GERMS are everywhere.
Cigarettes are somewhere.
Cigarettes have germs.
Silly.
Don’t forget about second hand smoke… those second hand germs are even worse for you!
One more reason I’m glad I quit smoking.
My 94 year old grandmother has been actively smoking for 80 years, and has no lasting adverse health effects. I am beginning to think her experience indicates the effects of smoking are more dependant on the genetics of the individual than other factors.
By the way: I hate the smell of cigarettes and smokers.
Whatever. they can kill themselves however they want just don’t make me smell it.
This story is interesting though. Smokers who drop cigarettes on the ground, pick it up from the floor or ground, brush it off, and stick it in their mouths and light it. I did this when I was a smoker and I see smokers doing this all the time. Those same people would think it was disgusting, and rightfully so, to pick up food they dropped in the same place and eat it. I didn’t think cigarettes were germy because they are on fire.
Don’t get me wrong; I think smoking is bad for you and cigarettes stink and they make your mouth feel disgusting, but I call shenanigans on this story.
I guess my idea for a certified organic line of cigarettes just ain’t gonna fly.
Ah, so with national health care issues abound, this is somehow a way to smooth things over with Native Americans and let them know that their cultural traditions are dirty?
I can’t wait until Liberals tell Hispanics and African-Americans that their cultural diets are not healthy and are prime candidates for a fat tax (when and if this country is crazy enough to push one forward).
ScienceNews, really?
You know what they do to kill bugs infecting imported plants? FUMIGATION! Funny that we practically all carry bacterial or viral DNA of crazy-named bugs, the problem is with LIVING ORGANISMS.
“If these germs are alive, something she has not yet confirmed” !!!?!?!?! where is the god d*mn bonanza !?
Worst Scientific Journalist Award Nominee : Janet Raloff
Wow. definitely an example of form over substance.
This is a perfect example of letting ideology getting in the way of science.
Seriously, if getting your lungs to be be pure black and clogged with sht doesn’t make you stop it’s never going to stop you from doing MORE stupid things.
Not pure black. Diseased lungs are grayish. Seriously, the things about cigarettes that are really bad should be enough to make people stop it. That they are filled with bacteria shouldn’t matter. I bet being on fire kills that bacteria. I am sure the being on fire kills the human smoking the cigarette eventually.
#15 “Seriously, if getting your lungs to be be pure black and clogged with sht doesn’t make you stop it’s never going to stop you from doing MORE stupid things.”
#3 – because people are still smoking?
#12 – the indians smoke actual tobacco, about as far away from a modern cigarette as anything. Real tobacco isn’t nearly as bad as today’s chemical-laced cigs.
Not to mention that Nicotine is an antiseptic
Bogus BS. Where’s that BS meter!? So what they’re saying is germs survive the combustion of the tobacco, and then the hot smoky ride through the filter. Yeah right, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego made it through the fiery furnace.
Vices serve to make more tolerable a barely tolerable existence by giving satisfaction to alleviate stress. Stress kills more than any other human ailment.
#19 buddy
It’s also a very effective insecticide.
They go out of their way to avoid the real tobacco sales dampener. That it kills the sex drive, of most smokers. And can lead to impudence. But even the “concerned” health experts seems to avoid mentioning that. Cause they know this, more than lung cancer itself, would vastly diminish the use of tobacco. You might as well say that smoking, is like wearing a lead condom or chastity belt. And
I’m certain that it far easier to prove nicotine’s effect on sex drive, than it is to prove tobacco smoke causes cancer. But that’s the kind of study that’s been avoided like the plague, by the tobacco makers.
Smoking is still safer than getting shipped out to Iraq.
Sorry JJJman,
Burning tobacco of ANY kind makes the same carcinogens and toxins. Burning pure cellulose alone makes many of them.
Your body just didn’t evolve to breathe concentrated smoke from burning plant material.
Glenn,as for sex drive, check out the number of partners and frequency of sex for smokers vs non-smokers. I think you will be surprised. Sex, like smoking, is a behavior associated with the same personality types. Why do you think that Hollywood uses smoking when they want to flag someone as a “bad” girl or guy in a movie?
Sex performance drops in in later life, when cardiovascular disease shows up – a little earlier and worse for smokers.
How many packs a day does the kid smoke?
As a doc, I don’t want to encourage smoking but bad research doesn’t help.
Bacteria tend to need warmth and moisture to live. Tobacco doesn’t meet that requirement. Plus, of course, the combustion would probably kill off the few that remain. And, even if some get through, you need a dose sufficiently large to actually cause an infection. It is highly unlikely that a half dozen surviving campylobacter bugs are going to make you sick.
This looks like one for the Annals of Improbable Research. http://improbable.com/
Disgusting.
This is why [our] Western culture and Academia is the laughing stock of the planet. No such thing as “Science” in this country anymore.. Only Political Science.
The century long agenda to create the dumbest public of any country on the planet is now complete and being fed the fruits of this labour.
Over the next year+, -shocking crisis will be created to push the best golden apples born of our pathetic “world class” peer reviewed “science tree system down our collective throats in hopes to outpace the now almost daily reports of fraud this same “world class” science has been engaged in. -which of course, is being reported just about everywhere but here in the good ‘ol U.S. of A.
This is just a small “taste” of the panacea to come if we do not stop this, THIS YEAR. –and most important, to learn how to discern *fact from fiction*
Major policy decisions are about to be made with the “pinnacles” of our [fake, phony and fraudulent] pseudo science. -exampled above.
Learn the truth and put a stop to all the fraud NOW. -before we use up what’s left of the planet’s rare earth’s
building useless “clean” technology that is no cleaner that that which it replaces.
(Tesla re-discovered Clean (resonant) energy in the 1900’s. (this is ONLY form of *efficient* energy that deserves to be called “clean”) All the others move the “pollution” to a different place. manufacturing solar panels is NOT a clean process, -and windfarms for national grid purposes is just plain DUMB in light of age old jet streams and wind currents 1000’s of miles off track..
Ignorance is not bliss…it is death disguised as a gilded cage.
-s
pretty easy to see who the smokers are in these comments.
It’s fine, both my parents smoked — heavily — for decades. Both died of lung cancer.
Coincidence?
Interesting debate but facts are facts. Tobacco, regardless of the form, is an immunosuppressive. When CD-4/ T-cells and CD-8 cells are suppressed, your risk of infection from virus, bacteria or parasite will increase. Mitosis is more rapid, mitotic mutation is more likely. This is not debatable. Take your chances. It’s a game of Russian roulette. Maybe today will be the day that a cell is exposed to one of the >43 proven carcinogens from circulating tobacco, and divides wrong. You will know in a few years. Good luck with that.