As if smoking isn’t bad enough for your health, researchers recently discovered that cigarettes are “widely contaminated” with hundreds of species of infectious bacteria… yuck! Not only that, but they think those bacteria are somehow able to survive the smoking process, which means it’s not just smokers who are affected, but people exposed to secondhand smoke may be at risk too.
Talk about an eye-opener! When I heard the story I can’t say I was shocked, but it was interesting to learn that even though scientists knew they were going to find bacteria in cigarettes, even they were surprised that most of those bacteria are infectious to humans—like clostridium, klebsiella, and pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause damage the lungs, urinary tract and kidneys… holy smokes!
More research is planned to find out just how these bacteria affect human health, so it will be interesting to see what they learn. And in the meantime, do you really need any more reason to quit smoking???