Academic/General Training Module by Adam Smith First Published in 2015

E 
is more harmful to nonsmokers than to smokers. 
F 
is less likely to be at risk of contracting lung 
cancer. 
G 
is more likely to be at risk of contracting various 
cancers. 
H
opposes smoking and publishes research on the 
subject. 
I 
is just as harmful to smokers as it is to 
nonsmokers. 
 
J 
reduces the quantity of blood flowing around the 
body. 
 
 
 

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 IELTS
 JOURNAL 
 
72 
The Risks of Cigarette Smoke 
 
Discovered in the early 1800s and named ‘nicotianine’, the oily essence now called 
nicotine is the main active ingredient of tobacco. Nicotine, however, is only a small 
component of cigarette smoke, which contains more than 4,700 chemical compounds, 
including 43 cancer-causing substances. In recent times, scientific research has been 
providing evidence that years of cigarette smoking vastly increases the risk of 
developing fatal medical conditions. 
In addition to being responsible for more than 85 per cent of lung cancers, smoking is 
associated with cancers of, amongst others, the mouth, stomach and kidneys, and is 
thought to cause about 14 per cent of leukaemia and cervical cancers. In 1990, 
smoking caused more than 84,000 deaths, mainly resulting from such problems as 
pneumonia, bronchitis and influenza. Smoking, it is believed, is responsible for 30 per 
cent of all deaths from cancer and clearly represents the most important preventable 
cause of cancer in countries like the United States today. 
Passive smoking, the breathing in of the side-stream smoke from the burning of 
tobacco between puffs or of the smoke exhaled by a smoker, also causes a serious 
health risk. A report published in 1992 by the US Environmental Protection Agency 
(EPA) emphasized the health dangers, especially from side-stream smoke. This type of 
smoke contains more smaller particles and is therefore more likely to be deposited 
deep in the lungs. On the basis of this report, the EPA has classified environmental 
tobacco smoke in the highest risk category for causing cancer. 
As an illustration of the health risks, in the case of a married couple where one partner 
is a smoker and one a nonsmoker, the latter is believed to have a 30 per cent higher 
risk of death from heart disease because of passive smoking. The risk of lung cancer 
also increases over the years of exposure and the figure jumps to 80 per cent if the 
spouse has been smoking four packs a day for 20 years. It has been calculated that 17 
per cent of cases of lung cancer can be attributed to high levels of exposure to 
secondhand tobacco smoke during childhood and adolescence. 
A more recent study by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco 
(UCSF) has shown that secondhand cigarette smoke does more harm to nonsmokers 
than to smokers. Leaving aside the philosophical question of whether anyone should 
have to breathe someone else’s cigarette smoke, the report suggests that the smoke 
experienced by many people in their daily lives is enough to produce substantial 
adverse effects on a person’s heart and lungs. 
The report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (AMA), was 
based on the researchers’ own earlier research but also includes a review of studies 

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