Thread: 1st time over a decade I have gone 24 hours without a cigarette

The health effects of PM2.5 particles are now recognized by healthcare professionals, and they are a worldwide risk for city-dwellers. For example, this from a clinician writing in the Medical Journal of Australia recently:
“In Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, air pollution causes an estimated 1611 premature deaths every year, with more than 3000 estimated for Australia as a whole. The most serious health problems relate to fine particles (PM2.5), emitted predominantly by diesel-powered vehicles and woodheaters.”
Bear in mind that Australian cities have relatively low levels of air pollution compared with Beijing and Shanghai!
http://www.toranacleanair.com/PM25pollution.html

yeah yeah yeah....the diesel particles are too fine to get expelled from the lungs. British lorry drivers have a high rate of bladder cancer from it too. Charming way to go.
Brisbane air is great. I'm breathing it now. And my wife is too. My car has electric windows and at the first sign of a truck ahead I valve them up and down according to whichever side it's on.

It's not just nicotine that'll damage your health, but air pollution will significantly reduce a person's life-span, by about 5 years on average, for a city dweller compared to a country bumpkin.

Foetus size is also reduced by air pollution as well as by fluorides in water.

ccording to a new study by Brisbane scientists, exposure to air pollution significantly reduces fetus size during pregnancy. The study compared the size of fetuses in more than 15,000 ultrasound scans in Brisbane to air pollution levels within a 14km radius of the city. These fetuses were between 13 and 26 weeks duration.
"The study found that mothers with a higher exposure to air pollution had fetuses that were, on average, smaller in terms of abdominal circumference, head circumference and femur length," Dr Adrian Barnett (Queensland University of Technology senior research fellow) said.
The 10-year study, which was undertaken by Dr Barnett, Dr Craig Hansen (US Environmental Protection Agency) and Dr Gary Pritchard (PacUser), was published in the international journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
"To our knowledge this is the first study of its kind as it uses ultrasound measurement as a direct estimate of growth, rather than using birth weight as a delayed measure of growth," Dr Barnett said.
"When analyzing scans from women at different distances to monitoring sites, we found that there was a negative relationship between pollutants such as sulfur dioxide found in diesel emissions, and ultrasound measurement.
"If the pollution levels were high the size of the fetus decreased significantly."


From.

Red Orbit university online.














Sunrise over Brisbane.

Yes, that's a photo of sunrise on a Winter morning when the fog is lifting....taken from Mt Cootha. You can tell it's fog because it follows the river. I know that view well.

We also have smoke from bushfires in the dry season.

As for the study, some suburbs are much better than others. The prevailing breeze is South_Easterly. I know the right suburbs to be living in, and we're currently living in one.

I wonder how your lungs look like after 50 years of tobacco smoke ?

Originally Posted by Latindancer

.Brisbane air is great. I'm breathing it now. And my wife is too. My car has electric windows and at the first sign of a truck ahead I valve them up and down according to whichever side it's on.

That won't help you, you're still taking air in through the air vents, filtered or not, the micro particles get in and you can't stay in your car forever.

There's a "life rate" for pollutants in the air, diesel particles, surprisingly enough have the lowest "life expectancy" in the air you breath, possibly because the hydro-carbon particles are heavier.

The dangerous pollutants are the ones that have combined with ozone in UV light, as happens in Brisbane and Chiangmai.

That toxic mix is as bad as smoking tobacco.

Wrong there, about the "fog". That's smog, a combination of smoke and fog.
The pic comes from the Queesland gov. environmental protection agency.
http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/environmental_management/air/air_quality_monitoring/
air_pollutants/

Brisbane's been focused on re, studies in air quality because it was initially regarded as a clean air area, but to the surprise of researchers, the high number of deaths and of malformed foeti as well as the lowering of male to female birth ratio gave cause for concern,

A lot of it (if not all) has to do with the high vehicle per capita ratio and high ozone and UV levels in Brisbane, increasing daily.

Gee.....I'm so worried.

And btw, your link only goes to a general govt page

4 weeks now with my half ass attempt at quitting smoking. But I'm still getting through the work day without one. And I have my fat ass back in the gym now for almost two weeks.

Cheers mates!

But the irritability is still there in a big way sometimes. Just not today.

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Just not today.

Reminds me of my brothers approach to quitting. When asked if he's quit smoking reply's, "No but not smoking today." He's been saying the same for 10 years.

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Gee.....I'm so worried.

And btw, your link only goes to a general govt page

Well try again at all your Q'ld gov. environment and AQ sites, you'll find a lot more.

Or try Google.


Brisbane again.





And again.

keep up the good work, storekeeper. Frankly, I think that cutting down to 5 ciggies a day is pretty damn near quitting smoking. Keep it up...go at your own pace. You're doing this for yourself, not us.

Originally Posted by Norton

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Just not today.

Reminds me of my brothers approach to quitting. When asked if he's quit smoking reply's, "No but not smoking today." He's been saying the same for 10 years.

That's a good one.

Just for today, and tomorrow never comes.

Originally Posted by Submaniac

keep up the good work, storekeeper. Frankly, I think that cutting down to 5 ciggies a day is pretty damn near quitting smoking. Keep it up...go at your own pace. You're doing this for yourself, not us.

I'll go along with that.

When I cut down before quitting I seemed to go through a lot of the withdrawing then, including coughing up heaps of gunk.

Finally, after quitting, I've got to the stage where the congested gunk has gone and what I do expectorate is black flecks in the mucus,

It's been an interesting process.

How this ties in with air pollution is that I've been observing and listening to a few other guys who've quit or are quitting, or are using lobelia for their asthma, all in two environments.

One is smoke free mountain countryside, away from any arterial traffic or pollution, Antarctic air blows across daily.

The other environmenta few miles away, is in a riverine valley, with arterial transport and a busy urban district, with less fresh air flow through it.

Those quitting tobacco who live in the rural area have less headaches, cough less and seem more cheerful than those living in the more polluted urban area.

The only difference between the two groups is the volume of exhaust fumes breathed in. Both groups have the same amount of exercise and similar diets, and alcohol consumption levels (occasional drinkers, ie, not every day) The rural dwellers sometimes report eye and throat irritation when in town, while the urban dwellers don't notice any.

My guess is that CO and Co2 levels are higher in the urban non-smokers than in the rural ones.
Most likely higher No2 levels and Sulphates in the air in town also.

ENT seems to think he knows everything, even more than a person who has lived most of his life in Brisbane.
I still go up Mt Cootha regularly, mate. And I used to go there as a kid. And you post a couple of photos of the city from the lookout, at a time when bushfire smoke is obscuring it, trying to imply it is always like that.
It's beyond laughable.
I won't derail this thread by saying any more, unless ENT's mind flaps too much.

One of the BIG ISSUES that non-smokers raise the risks that they suffer from breathing in second hand tobacco smoke.

All smoke is polluting, tobacco, wood smoke, coal smoke, and smoky exhausts on the roads.
Whether that smoke is from bush fires or from rice straw burning, it's the same as burning tobacco, hydrocarbonic cellulose smoke. Diesel hasn't got the cellulose in it, but combine it with any of the other forms of smoke pollution and ozone in UV light and it'll quickly recombine to form some rather nasty carcinogenic compounds worse than nicotine.

It's all very well to give up smoking tobacco, but if you're going to stay healthy after that, it's a good idea to stay away from any airborn carboniferous pollutants.

There's nothing quite as obtuse as a non-smoking health freak pounding the concrete (and wrecking every joint in his body from his feet up) or cyclin around city suburbs inhaling massive quantities of air born pollutants in an effort to stay or become healthier.

Health effects of particulate matter
Under normal conditions a human respiratory tract in good health is able to deal
with inhaled particles without undue stress or long-term effects. In sensitive
individuals, or when high levels of particles are present, particulate matter may
contribute to increased rates of respiratory illnesses and symptoms.
Studies indicate that such adverse effects are dependent on a number of factors,
including:
particle size (whether particles can penetrate the lower airways),
the intensity of the exposure,
the chemical nature of the particles and their interaction with human tissue,
the presence or absence of pre-existing conditions (especially diseases of the
respiratory tract), and
meteorological factors such as winds, humidity, a temperature inversion, rain
or thunderstorms.
From;
Queensland Government; Envirinmental Protection Agency Queensland.

Ozone and Low altitude smog;
Produced (at near ground level) from
Nitrogen oxide + Volatile Organic Component
(aldehydes, ketones, light hydro-carbons)
NO + VOC <> NO2 + O2 <> NO + O3 (Sunlight as catalysis)
Main cause in SE Queensland – Bushfires
Affects:
Stunts plant growths (reduced sunlight)
Damage to materials – rubber, fabric, masonry and paint
Prolonged respiratory systems, skin and eye irritation etc.

some people are actually genetically immune to cancer.

Are You Immune to Cancer? | DiscoverMagazine.com

about 10-15% of the population has "super cancer fighting white blood cells".

Ecuadorian Genetic Mutants Are Immune to Cancer

http://phys.org/news151840958.html

But it's not just avoiding cancer that motivates to quit smoking...there's emphysema COPD, heart disease...etc.

and the stink

Originally Posted by Submaniac

some people are actually genetically immune to cancer.

Are You Immune to Cancer? | DiscoverMagazine.com

about 10-15% of the population has "super cancer fighting white blood cells".

Ecuadorian Genetic Mutants Are Immune to Cancer

Why do the majority of people never get cancer?

But it's not just avoiding cancer that motivates to quit smoking...there's emphysema COPD, heart disease...etc.

Apparently that's so in my family.

No cancer issues so far, even among the tobacco smokers.

Yeah.....I warned my dad about heart disease about 6 months before he died of it, due to smoking.
His reply was "nonsense....there's no history of heart disease in our family".

And after 50 years smoking, I'd say yours look like the ones on the right.