So I'll follow up my long-winded weekend update with a bit of research news. This makes me kinda glad i don't spend quite as much time in smoke-filled bars as I used to. Makes me also a bit more respectful of non-smoking sections. It seems people have a right to not have their DNA mutated, wouldn't ya say? (disclaimer: I'm not one of those crazy cigarrette nazi people, but this suckin on nicotine just doesn't seem too healthy...then again i drink coffee like it's my job...but i somehow think inhaling smoke on a daily basis is a wee bit worse than casually sipping 2-3 cups of coffee in a day, but i'll shut up now and give you the hard research...)
"Just one puff of a cigarette could damage a smoker's DNA, the first step to cancer and heart disease, researchers said on October 1, 2004. It obviously takes more than that to cause disease, but the team at the University of Pittsburgh were surprised at how little smoke it took to do the initial damage. William Saunders and colleagues studied the effects of real cigarette smoke on human fibroblasts, common cells found in the connective tissue that holds much of the body together. They exposed batches of growing cells to liquefied cigarette smoke and saw the chromosomes that carry the DNA were pulled apart from both ends. 'Double-stranded breaks are considered the most mutagenic type of DNA damage because the broken ends can fuse to other chromosomes in the cell,' Saunders said in a statement."
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