My great grandmother, Lois Sahlberg was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of 86. For two and a half years she battled the cancer, but the disease kept spreading and eventually took her life on February 29, 2000. Always with a smile, she never complained, and all the family could do was ask why. Why would such a sweet woman be hit with such a tragic disease? There was really no explanation behind it; she was a healthy woman, she exercised daily and she was still quite independent. .
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a carcinogen as a cancer-causing substance or agent. This still leaves much to the imagination. How does one actually contract a carcinogen into their system? How does the said chemical attack the body? All shall be revealed in good time. First, we have to realize that carcinogens are a major threat to the way we live.
How does one actually obtain the carcinogen into their system? Daily we hear about something that has now been proven to cause cancer. Today it seems that we can contract cancer from almost anything. Potato chips, drinking water and asbestos all could lead to cancer. Alas, the one we hear about the most is tobacco cigarettes. Causing nearly 30 percent of all cancer related deaths, cigarettes and second hand smoke have become one of the mostly deadly criminals in North America (Encarta). One can obtain cancer in the lungs, esophagus, respiratory tract, bladder, pancreas and even the stomach, liver and kidneys. Due to second hand smoke, nearly 3,000 people die from lung cancer yearly in the United States alone. That is a striking number of people. Think, not the person smoking the cigarettes rather the person in the same room. .
As we already know, cigarettes cause many forms of cancer. Some cancers are more likely to develop while smoking cigarettes, especially lung cancer. The chart below shows the risks of getting lung cancer from smoking filtered and non-filtered cigarettes.