While nicotine has many effects on the body, it’s not what’s causing illnesses or damaging your lungs. The damage is actually done by tar – the black, sticky substance created when some of the chemicals in cigarettes burn and melt together.

Experts estimate that cigarette smoke contains between 7,000 and 8,000 different chemicals. About 70 of those are known carcinogens, or substances that can cause cancer. So, whenever you inhale cigarette smoke, you’re bathing the delicate lining of your lungs in a toxic fog. This can leave a thin coating of tar on its surface similar in color and composition to the kind used to pave streets. And every time you smoke, you’re adding more damage.

Smoking causes damage to lungs over time — and it’s permanent

Your lungs contain around 500 million tiny air sacs called alveoli that pull oxygen from the air you breathe and release carbon dioxide when you exhale. Smoking destroys these air sacs by killing the cells that line them.

If you break a bone, it will eventually mend. If you cut your skin, it will heal. Even the liver can grow back sometimes if a portion of it is removed. But lung tissue doesn’t grow back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Damage to alveoli gets worse over time, too. And as lung tissue is damaged, it becomes more fibrous, making it harder for people to expand their lungs fully with each inhalation. Less lung tissue and less expansion mean less oxygen getting to all the places it’s needed. That’s why many people don’t think there’s a problem until they start feeling short of breath.

Since people start out with millions of alveoli, it can take 15 or 20 years to lose enough of them to really become obvious. But once you develop something like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), there’s no going back. Once you get to that point, you’re never going to get off the oxygen tank

It really is kind of amazing that some smokers don’t develop lung cancer. Their lungs are getting so much daily exposure to smoke and carcinogens.

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