Research throughout the last few decades has demonstrated significant health risks associated with cigarette smoking.
Examples of these risks include: emphysema, chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, and inhalation of carbon monoxide.
Carbon monoxide is produced as a cigarette burns.
This odorless and colorless gas is inhaled with cigarette smoke into the lungs.
As smoke passes through the air passages, carbon monoxide is carried to the alveoli, the small air sacs in which oxygen exchange to the blood occurs.
As blood passes through the alveolar capillaries, oxygen in the alveoli is attracted to deoxygenated hemoglobin located on the surface of the blood cells.
However, carbon monoxide has a 200 times greater affinity for hemoglobin than does oxygen.
Carbon monoxide molecules bind to hemoglobin and can prevent oxygen from reaching the body's tissues.
The combined hemoglobin and carbon monoxide molecules are called carboxyhemoglobin.
Although the levels of carbon monoxide produced in cigarette smoking are not immediately dangerous, research suggests that reduced oxygen transport to fetal tissues may contribute to the lower birth weight of babies born to mothers who smoke.
There may even be a correlation between smoking during pregnancy and incidence of sudden infant death syndrome.
