Smoking women can be seen everywhere today. As a matter of fact, women smoking cigarettes are so ubiquitous, that they no longer warrant the "tsk tsk" they used to evoke in days gone by. Yet did you know that a smoking woman puts herself at a unique health risk by engaging in this habit? Sure, everyone knows that for a woman smoking there will be several lasting effects; smoking and women have been connected to lung cancer, heart disease, and of course the ever present emphysema. Pictures of women smoking after cancer therapy have been widely circulated on the Internet, and they only add credence to the addictiveness that these tobacco products posses.

Yet there has been no greater disservice to women smokers than the generic enumerations of adverse health effects that caption any picture of women smoking cigarette products. Women smoking are beginning to become jaded toward the true and specific diseases they are inviting into their bodies simply by inhaling the smoke. For example, women smoking know that the habit has been linked to lung cancer, but do you know that kidney cancer, colon cancer, cervical cancer, liver cancer, bladder cancer, and also throat cancer are also found in women smoking cigarettes and using other tobacco products? Furthermore, did you know that women smoking after a bout with breast cancer experience higher mortality rates than their non smoking counterparts?

In recent years, the risk of heart attacks and strokes have come to the forefront in articles dealing with women’s health. What goes largely unsaid is the fact that women smoking will suffer from stroke more often not simply because a blood vessel in the brain area may suddenly give way, but much more so because women who smoke suddenly experience a loss of blood in certain brain areas. Women smoking pipes are as much at risk as those chewing tobacco – another fact that often goes unreported. Women that smoke will also be faced with reproductive problems, such as earlier menopauses, infertility, and genetic abnormalities.

Women and smoking is of course also a hot topic when discussing the effects of pregnant women smoking on their children. Pregnant women and smoking have been linked to low birth weight, higher infant mortality, stillbirth, and an increased risk of asthma in their children. The implication of smoking on women has been a dire one, yet without the very specifics of the effects it is too easy to simply fear lung cancer and then feel vindicated – as a female smoker – when it does not come to pass, all the while ignoring the growing cancer at the back of the voice box.