[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by M G F on July 27, 2007, 4:25 pm, in reply to "Re: Body Worlds" Discoloration from smoking, particularly lighter or social smoking, tends to be concentrated in the upper third of the lungs. Lighter and social smokers tend to inhale less deeply, so the discoloration is concentrated in the upper third of the lungs. The longer a person smokes and the more a person smokes, the more evenly the discoloration/damage is distributed. This more extensive distribution occurs partly because a longer term or heavier smoker tends to inhale more deeply on a regular basis than one who smokes for a shorter period of time or only socially. It also occurs because the greater the accumulation of tar in a smokers lungs, the more difficult it becomes to take shallow breaths because the body automatically adjusts its breathing to get the air into as much of the lungs as possible to compensate for their compromised ability to absorb oxygen. Discoloration from air pollution, on the other hand, tends to be more evenly distributed because it follows the the same distribution of normal respiration, which is a mixture of shallow and deep breaths. Depending on the pollutant, there may be areas (splotches) of greater concentration, but they tend to be distributed throughout the lungs. People living in areas where the pollution consists mostly of industrial gases, as opposed to carbon and other solids, may have lungs that _appear_ much cleaner and healthy than even a light smoker, but are, in fact, in worse condition than those of a lifelong heavy smoker. As something of an aside, I can usually tell when listening to a patient's lungs whether she smokes something other than cigarettes on a regular basis. As anyone who smokes or has smoked marijuana knows, you tend to inhale a little differently and deeply and hold the smoke much longer. After a few years, the result can be detected by someone who knows what to listen for. You may say "no" but the nurse on the other end of the stethoscope knows better.
It is a great exhibit! I saw it when it traveled through my region. Both suckapunks and vesperae's observations about smokers lungs vs air pollution discoloration are correct. In my opinion, some of the lungs that were not labeled as coming from smokers have to have come from people who had smoked at some point in their lives or who had been social smokers for an extended period of time. This opinion is not based on the discoloration so much as it is based on _where_ the discoloration was located and _how_ it was concentrated. 
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