Quote Originally Posted by tundramanq View Post
Since the beginning we have been breathing in dust and smoke. Our lungs remove it using mucus to trap and the little hairs (name escapes me) in the bronchial passages to "pump" the solids and mucus out and down the gullet. As long a this system isn't disabled or overwealmed all is fine.
This is what causes chain smokers (I smoke ) problems as nicotine puts the hairs to sleep and it takes about ten minutes for them to start working again.
The hairs are called cilia, and the nicotine effects are not the only issues with inhaled cigarette smoke---tars and other pretty caustic chemicals, as well as the particulate ash of the smoke itself, pretty well poison a lot of the more delicate portions of the lung and airway lining causing it to turn from its normal mucus secreting protective type of cell to a non-mucous secreting non-ciliated variety (called metaplasia) that makes all the airways, small and large become slowly nonfunctional for clearing inhaled or native (mucous and inflammatory reactive cells) solids (something called chronic bronchitis). Never mind the destruction it acauses to the thin walls separating the actual air sacs/alveoli of the actual gas exchanging parts of the lungs, eventually causing emphysema. Chronic bronchitis and emphysema are at two ends of a spectrum of acquired lung disease better known as COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), the second worst non-cancerous ill effect of smoking after the advanced atherosclerosis it also causes. Cancer, well we won't go there.

j