Cigarettes contain about 600 ingredients. As cigarettes are burnt, more than 7000 chemicals are produced. Among them, at least 69 are harmful, and many are toxic that can cause lung cancer.

The tobacco epidemic is one of the greatest public health threats the world has ever seen, according to the WTO studies smoking:

  • Cause more than 8 million deaths worldwide each year
  • More than 7 million of these deaths are due to direct smoking
  • About 1.2 million are due to non-smokers’ exposure to second-hand smoke

Are There Any Safer Form of Smoking?

Smoking is the most common form of tobacco use in the world. Other tobacco products include waterpipe tobacco, various smokeless tobacco products, cigars, cigarillos, roll your own tobacco, pipe tobacco, Bidis and Kreteks. But all forms of tobacco are harmful and there is no safe level of tobacco exposure.

For example,

waterpipe tobacco use is damaging to health in similar ways to cigarette tobacco use. However, the health dangers of waterpipe tobacco use are often little understood by users.