The Dangers of Cigarette Smoking

LESSON 1

Topic: What is cigarette?

Intended Learning Outcomes:

1. Describe the characteristics of a cigarette.

2. Display resistant skills in situation related to cigarette smoking.

3. Compare the different smoke produced by cigarette smoking.

4. Differentiate the poison present in cigarette.

Start Up Activity

Self-Inventory (Active or Passive)

Read and answer each item below with YES or NO. Total the number of responses for the interpretation of score.

1. Do you smoke?

2. Is there someone who lives with you, who smoke?

3. Do you have friends who smoke?

4. Do you stay around people who smoke?

5. Are you often exposed to cigarette smoke?

6. When people around you smoke, do you let them know that you do not want to smell or inhale their smoke?

7. Have you tried giving disapproving look at people who smoke to let them know that you indirectly dislike smoking?

8. have you ever commented about someone smoking but not directly to the smoker?

9. Have you asked smokers to get rid of their smoke?

10. Have you asked smokers to transfer to another place so that you would not inhale their smoke?

11. Have you ever tried moving away from a smoker who does not listen to your appeal?

12. If you are in a vehicle and someone is smoking, do you roll down the window towards the window to avoid inhaling smoke?

13. Have you ever tried moving away from a smoker without asking him/her to move away instead?

14. Will you just let smokers smoke near you, choosing to be passive, saying nothing and doing nothing?

15. Are you afraid that if you speak out and ask a smoker to stop smoking or move away from you, that he/she will laugh or get mad at you?

If you answered YES for items 1 to 5, you might be “at risk of exposure to smoke”

Now, for items 6 to 13, if you answered YES to five or more questions, you are in an active zone and you stand your rights and protects your health. If you answered YES to three or four questions you are heading from standing for your rights and protecting your health.

If you answered YES to 1 and 2 questions, you are beginning to stand for your rights and protect your health.

What is your score in the self-inventory?

If you answered YES for items 1 to 5, you might be “at risk of exposure to smoke”

If you answered YES to 1 and 2 questions, you are beginning to stand for your rights and protect your health.

If you answered NO to items 6 to 13, you are a passive smoker and need to learn to stand up for your rights and protect your health

If you answered YES to items 14 and 15, it is important to how to be active in standing up for your rights and protecting your health

CONTENT

The main ingredient in cigarettes is tobacco. Tobacco is a green, leafy plant that is grown in warm climates. Farmers use many chemicals to grow tobacco. They use fertilizers to make the soil rich and insecticides to kill the insects that eat the tobacco plant.

After the tobacco plants are picked, they are dried, and machines break up the leaves into small pieces. Artificial flavorings and other chemicals are added. Some chemicals are put in cigarettes to keep them burning; otherwise, they would go out.

There are over 4,000 chemicals in cigarettes. 43 of them are known to be carcinogens. Carcinogens are substances which causes cancer. Nicotine the addictive drug found in tobacco products like cigarette is a poisonous stimulant drug increases the central nervous system activity. The central nervous system controls all body organ like the heart, lungs, brain, and processes like heart rate, blood pressure rate, respiration rate and more.

Familiar Chemicals in Cigarettes
Chemical	Found in:
carbon monoxide	car exhaust
nicotine	bug sprays
tar	material to make roads
arsenic	rat poison
ammonia	cleaning products
hydrogen cyanide	gas chamber poison
cyanide	deadly poison
acetone	nail polish remover
butane	cigarette lighter fluid
DDT	insecticides
formaldehyde	to preserve dead bodies
sulfuric acid	car batteries
cadmium	used to recharge batteries
freon	damages earth's ozone layer

geranic acid	a fragrance
methoprene	a pesticide
maltitol	a sweetener not permitted to be used in foods in the U.S.
Sources: Dr. Joel Dunnington, Tobacco Almanac, Revised, May 1993.

Every time a cigarette is lighted, smoke is emitted. There are three smokes produced by cigarette smoking namely:

1. Mainstream Smoke- refers specifically to the smoke that a smoker directly inhales.

2. Sidestream Smoke- the smoke that comes out of the lighted end of a cigarette or pipe. This is also called Second-hand smoke (SHS) or environmental tobacco smoke (EST). This is more dangerous than mainstream smoke.

3. Third hand smoke- smoke left for a long time on sofa, beddings pillow and other objects. This smoke also called residual tobacco smoke (RTS) settles along with dust and can last for months. This smoke still contains harmful chemicals and carcinogens.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies second-hand smoke as a Group A carcinogen. This means that cigarette smoke has substances known to cancer to humans. Short exposures to second-hand smoke can also cause changes in a passive smoker’s blood. It makes the blood platelets sticker, add friction to the blood vessels causing damages to the linings, thus, resulting to an increase in heart rate and performance. (www.epa.gov)

HOW TO SAY NO!

Practice this three-step technique in saying NO to smoking and alcohol drinking. You may also partner the question in each step and let him/her explain his/her answer.

STEP 1: Tell the problem

Ask: What is the problem?

Your partner must tell the problem

Say: “That is wrong.”

“Smoking is bad.”

“That is prohibited.”

“Drinking alcohol is against the school rules.”

STEP 2: Predict what will happen

Ask: What could happen?

Your partner must share the possible dangers

Say: “Could anyone be harmed if you do it? How?”

“You may get into trouble.”

“You and others will feel bad.”

“You may get sick and affect other”

STEP 3: Stop and say NO

Ask: How will you stop and say NO?

Your partner may choose anyone of the following:

Simply say, “No, I am not interested”.
Change the topic. Say “I am going to the park, you can come with me” or “Would you like to see a movie with me?”
Tell the truth. Say “I hate smoking it makes my breath smell bad; Smoking makes my body stink” or “I am too young to die”.
Joke about it. Say “ my parents are keen in smelling. I won’t get pass them” or “are you really ready to die? I’m not”.
Give reasons. “I don’t smoke. It’s bad for the health.””I’m pro-environment. Smoking makes the air dirty.””I have a training today. I need clean air to get going” “Let’s play basketball, beat me”
Tell a story. Say “My father got really sick because of smoking. It was painful” or “My grandmother died from smoking. I don’t want that to happen to me or you!”
Walk away if you can’t change your friends mind.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

ACTIVITY 2: The Dangers Within

Draw a cigarette stick on your activity sheet (bond paper, oslo paper, intermediate paper?). List several chemicals that you think are present in a cigarette stick. Write these chemicals around the cigarette stick you have drawn.

Related image

SELF CHECK

Complete the following statements.

1. I have learned...

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. I understand...

3. I am aware...

4. I will help the government to...

POST TEST

Directions: Supply the missing word by writing the correct answer in the space provided.

1. Cigarette smoking primarily affects ____________ system.

3. Examples of chemicals in a cigarette are ________ and _________.

4. The addictive chemical in cigarette is _____________.

5. The plant whose leaves can be rolled into a cigar pipe and can be smoke is ______.

6. A kind of smoke emitted by cigarettes which smokers directly inhale is called ______.

7. The drugs which non-drug users might try and lead to more trials of dangerous drugs are also known as ________.

8. __________ smoke that comes out of the lighted end of a cigarette or pipe.

9. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies _____________smoke as a Group A carcinogen.

10. __________are substances which causes cancer.