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Asbestos and Smoking Tobacco

Smoking does not cause asbestosis, pleural scarring, pleural effusion, or mesothelioma cancer. However, since smoking affects the lungs' natural protective mechanisms, it makes people that smoke tobacco more vulnerable to inhaled asbestos and more likely to develop asbestosis.

Smoking and COPD

Many workers who were exposed to asbestos were also heavy cigarette smokers. Because the latency of asbestos-related diseases is 20 years or more, by the time these workers are checked for asbestos diseases they often have a very long smoking history and therefore smoking-related disease -- principally chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD includes two separate pulmonary diseases, which commonly overlap in a given patient — chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Chronic bronchitis and emphysema are just different manifestations of lung damage from cigarette smoking.

Smoking is also the major cause of lung cancer. Since both asbestos and smoking can independently cause lung cancer, it is obviously important that anyone who might have been exposed to friable asbestos never smoke any kind of tobacco products and avoid areas with second-hand smoke as well.

Synergism

Cigarette smoking not only adds to lung cancer risk in some asbestos workers, it can heighten the risk is a process known as synergism. This has been demonstrated with certainty only if the worker has lung scarring from asbestosis. Synergism means that if, for example, the risk of developing lung cancer from asbestosis significantly increases.