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Section 2 - Reading
Questions 11-24 are based on the reading passage below.
The Risks of Cigarette Smoke
Discovered in the early 1800s and named nicotine, 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
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 non-smoker, 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 second hand tobacco smoke during childhood and adolescence.
A more recent study by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) has
shown that second-hand cigarette smoke does more harm to non-smokers 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 over the
past few years. The American Medical Association represents about half of all US doctors and is a
strong opponent of smoking. The study suggests that people who smoke cigarettes are continually
damaging their cardiovascular system, which adapts in order to compensate for the effects of
smoking. It further states that people who do not smoke do not have the benefit of their system
adapting to the smoke inhalation. Consequently, the effects of passive smoking are far greater on
non-smokers than on smokers.
This report emphasizes that cancer is not caused by a single element in cigarette smoke; harmful
effects to health are caused by many components. Carbon monoxide, for example, competes with
oxygen in red blood cells and interferes with the blood’s ability to deliver life-giving oxygen to the
