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Younger adults often don't notice the damage that years of smoking can cause until later in life when lung capacity may be severely cut.
Jump to full article: Los Angeles Times, 2008-06-30
Author: Jeannine Stein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Intro: in fact, Winehouse is not an anomaly. Health experts say that young adult smokers are no strangers to mild emphysema, a shortness of breath caused by damage to the lung's small air sacs. Smoking can permanently deteriorate the lungs, irreversibly diminishing lung capacity -- and the damage starts young, even in teens who smoke five cigarettes a day, according to one 1996 study from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston of 10,000 youths who smoked.
But many smokers don't show symptoms for years, leading them to believe no damage is being done when, in fact, it is accruing all the time. "Teenagers and people in their 20s think they're invincible," says Dr. Norman H. Edelman, chief medical officer for the American Lung Assn. "They think they can wait until they're 35 to stop smoking and everything's going to be fine, but they can do permanent damage before that." . . .
As well as emphysema, Samet adds, smoking can cause chronic bronchitis, lung inflammation characterized by irritation and scarring. "There are a lot of extraordinarily irritating substances in tobacco smoke. The lung has defense mechanisms that can clean out things that get in. But smokers dump so much toxic stuff in that the lungs can't keep up."
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