Smoking has been around for over 2000 years and still continues today. Over 1,300 people die every day, just from smoking. On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers. Smoking is a hard habit to break because it contains tobacco which contains nicotine, which is highly addictive. Smoking is harmful to your body and to the people exposed to the smoke. Smokers and those exposed to the second-hand smoke, often die from lung cancer or other tobacco-related illnesses.

If you have a family, smoking around kids increases their risk of developing ear infections, asthma, and other breathing complication like coughs, shortness of breath, and even bronchitis. The lungs and hearts of all family members in your home are put at risk by secondhand smoke, no matter how wide you keep the windows open. It can also affect your coworkers by causing you to take more time off from work than a non-smoking colleague. One study estimated that smokers cost businesses an average of $5,816 extra dollars each year. Smoking can affect your neighbors because of secondhand smoking. It has been shown to cause cancer in humans. Breathing in secondhand smoke, whether it’s from a neighbor’s burning cigarette or from a cigarette outside your window has been shown to have instant effects on your health.

Smoking causes many different types of illnesses. It causes lung cancer, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), heart disease, stroke, asthma, and diabetes. Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body, causes many diseases and reduces the health of smokers in general. If a smoker has asthma, tobacco smoke can trigger an attack or make an attack worse. Smokers are 12 to 13 times more likely to die from COPD than non-smokers. Quitting smoking lowers your risk for smoking-related diseases and can significantly add years to your life.

Secondhand smoking causes 7,330 deaths from lung cancer and 33,950 deaths from heart disease each year. Between 1964 and 2014, 2.5 million people died from exposure to secondhand smoke, according to a report from the U.S. Surgeon General. Smoking affects yourself and the people around you. Smoking itself is also very harmful to mother nature because it causes air, land and water pollution. It can also cause fires. Therefore, smoking can be harmful to everyone even the earth.

photo links:

https://www.shutterstock.com/search/second+hand+smoke

Harmful Effects Of Smoking – Quit Now For A Better Tomorrow

Health Matters – Second Hand Smoke

Have you ever wondered how animals are used for our everyday products? We don’t think about how our products are actually made, we just want to know the price and the quality of the product. Each year, more than 100 million animals, including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pig, monkeys, fish, and birds are killed in U.S laboratories. Animals are used for medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetic testing. The animals are treated poorly in the laboratories. We don’t want to know what happens behind the doors of a laboratory, we just want the product. Even though people test on animals it still doesn’t mean that the tests or the products are reliable.

Animals are not human beings, therefore they make poor test subjects. Animal experiments also are a waste of lives. It can be very scary, stressful and can add distress to an animal when it is locked up in a cage. Most of the time, the animals make poor test subjects because of all the added distress. The animals are burned, irritated, crushed, shocked, poisoned and infected. Fear and anxiety are daily parts of their lives, which is not supposed to be apart of everyday human lives. The animals are basically tortured and it is so unnecessary.

Animals are tortured every day, even though Scientists know that there are other alternatives, such as organs-on-chips, human cell-derived skin models and research with human volunteers. Organs-on-chips, developed by Harvard’s Wyss Institute, contain human cells. The chips can be used instead of animals in disease research, drug testing, and toxicity testing. Tests have shown that this method has a more accurate response then animal experiments do. Human cell-derived skin models, replicate key traits of normal human skin. It replaces the use of guinea pigs or mice, who would have been injected with a substance or had it applied to their shaved skin to determine an allergic response. Human volunteers use a method called ‘micro-dosing’ which can provide vital information of the safety of an experimental drug and how it is metabolized in human trials. Volunteers are given an extremely small one-time drug dose and techniques are used to monitor how the drug behaves in the body. Animals are taken against their will and tortured so that we can be happy.

The world doesn’t need another eyeliner, hand soap or food ingredients so badly that it should come at the expense of animals lives. There are other alternatives and people should stop testing on animals. More than $16 billion in U.S. taxpayer money is wasted annually on animal testing.  Other alternatives would be cheaper and more efficient. We support animal testing every day when we buy products that were tested on animals. Most of the products that we buy are unnecessary for our everyday lives. We just need to stop, research and look at the package, to see if you are helping something that many people want to stop.

Animals don’t deserve to be tested on. There are organizations like PETA, Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine, Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics and European Coalition to End Animal Experiments. PETA is about fighting against regulatory testing on animals. Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is involved in the replacement of animals with in-vitro methods in the medical field. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine promotes a vegan diet, preventative medicine, and alternatives to animal research. Coalition for Consumer’s Information on Cosmetics, let consumers know what products are not cruelty-free. European Coalition to End Animal Experiments, help eliminate all animal testing within the European Union. All these organizations believe that animals have rights like us. We need to stop supporting animal testing and start protecting the animals.

Bibliography:

Peta.org

Huffpost.com

Onegreenplanet.org

Wikipedia.org

https://www.cips.org/supply-management/news/2018/february/meps-call-for-worldwide-animal-testing-ban/

https://www.allure.com/story/california-cruelty-free-cosmetics-act-bill

http://blog.sermo.com/2018/03/05/doctors-approve-animal-testing/