At Mount Pearl Intermediate we subscribe to no smoking on or near the school grounds.

Effects of Smoking
Tobacco smoke contains a substance called nicotine, a poisonous alkoid. It also has substances such as carbon monoxide, acrolien, ammonia, prussic acid, aldehydes and tar. Tobacco contains about 4000 chemicals which when heated produce a lot of substances that cause irreparable damages to the health.

A cigarette burns at 700*C at the tip and at 60*C at the butts. This heat breaks down the tobacco stuffed inside to produce various toxins. When a cigarette burns the residues are concentrated towards the butt. To avoid excess inhaling of tobacco products, the concept of filters were introduced by the manufacturers, and an impression that filter cigarettes are harmless was created. But it has been proved that filters cannot altogether stop the substances getting inside. However the intake will be reduced by the quality of filter.

Diseases Caused
The harmful effects of smoking are numerous. Smoking affects lung and causes lung cancer. Its harmful effects do not end there. Cancer and some other illness such as heart diseases, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases are caused by the act.

Pipe and cigar users do not normally inhale much, which may not cause lung cancer but they run the risk of developing mouth cancer. In the case of pregnant women, smoking is doubly dangerous as it affects the child in the womb. The nicotine in tobacco reduces the blood flow and thereby the flow of oxygen and nutrients to the unborn baby gets reduced causing, sometimes, the death of the baby itself.

Passive Smoking
The dangers of smoking are not confined to the smoker himself. The non-smoker person by his side is also affected by the act of smoking. This is called passive smoking, inhaling the cigarette smoke of others. The passive smoking is also known as environmental or secondhand smoking.

According to the study released in February 2007, the signs for cardiovascular diseases are higher in people subjected to, secondhand smoking. It is confirmed in many studies that exposure to secondhand smoke causes lung cancer, heart diseases, heart attacks and breast cancer in the case of young women The risks, a passive smoker is exposed, have led to the ban of smoking in public and work places, in many countries.

Whether it is active smoking or passive smoking, harmful effects of smoking are numerous. It is high time to say no to Tobacco and no to smoking.