By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Tobacco kills millions
Placeholder Image
Tobacco in any form is deadly, which is why health professionals urge you to make World No Tobacco Day count by educating yourself and everyone around you on the dangers of this substance.
The use of tobacco — especially forms used for smoking — doesn’t harm just the user. It affects everyone within breathing distance, has destructive effects on unborn children and adversely impacts family and loved ones of tobacco users.
The economic costs of tobacco are equally devastating. In addition to the high health costs of treating tobacco-caused diseases, tobacco kills people at the height of their productivity, depriving families of breadwinners and nations of a healthy workforce.
Tobacco use is a major preventable cause of premature death and of several diseases worldwide. In addition to cancer and cardiovascular disease, cigarette, pipe, cigar and other traditional forms of tobacco have several effects in the mouth. Tobacco is a risk factor for oral cancer, oral cancer recurrence, adult periodontal diseases and congenital defects such as cleft lip and palate in children.
The second major cause of death in the world, tobacco is currently responsible for the death of one in 10 adults worldwide or about 5 million deaths each year. If current smoking patterns continue, tobacco will cause some 10 million deaths by the year 2020.
Tobacco is the fourth most common risk factor for disease worldwide.
Many of the ingredients found in tobacco can be found in products on the shelves of your garage, such as pesticides, toxins and poisons. Would you smoke those? When you are around someone smoking you are inhaling second-hand smoke which consists of:
• mainstream smoke, the smoke inhaled and exhaled by the smoker, and
• side-stream smoke, the smoke released directly from the end of a burning cigarette. Two-thirds of the smoke from a burning cigarette is not inhaled by the smoker but enters the surrounding environment. The contaminated air is inhaled by anyone in that area.
A non-smoker breathing second-hand smoke can be exposed to 4,000 different chemicals, 50 of which are associated with or known to cause cancer. Second-hand smoke has twice as much nicotine and tar as the smoke that smokers inhale. It also has five times the carbon monoxide which decreases the amount of oxygen in your blood. Exposure to second-hand smoke for as little as eight to 20 minutes can cause physical reactions linked to heart and stroke disease. That means:
1. the heart rate increases
2. the heart’s oxygen supply decreases, and
3. blood vessels constrict which increases blood pressure and makes the heart work harder than it normally does.
Prolonged and repeated exposure to second-hand smoke means that you, your family and friends are more likely to develop one or more of the second-hand smoke diseases, some of which are fatal:
• Lung cancer
• Heart disease
• Asthma
• Reduced lung function
• Bronchitis
• Middle ear infections
• Pneumonia
• Croup
• Sore throats
So much more is known about tobacco than what I’ve listed. Please take a moment Thursday on World No Tobacco Day and learn more about a substance that can have fatal consequences for you and your family. If you smoke, stop. And, when possible, use your influence to help others quit.

Ratcliffe works with the Coastal Health District.
Sign up for our e-newsletters
From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
8ccd7d661f85d37c8298791c9a56bec6e0f8449d4aea5c09c6ffcf527854f186
Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
Latest Obituaries