Chapter 14: Clean Air and Smoke: Protecting Your Lungs for Life

A Pair of Lungs for a Whole Life

Your shoes will not last forever. As your feet grow, you will need new ones, and you may have many pairs before you are grown up. Your lungs are different. The two lungs inside your chest right now are the same two lungs you will have when you are a teenager, a grown-up and, one day, a grandparent. They will travel with you through every birthday, every race and every song you ever sing.

Your lungs are still growing. When you were born, your lungs were small, and they had far fewer of the tiny air sacs called alveoli than they have now. As you grow, your lungs get bigger and stronger, and they keep growing all through childhood. Most people's lungs finish growing somewhere in the late teens or early twenties. The years you are living through right now are an important time for building healthy lungs.

Every day, your lungs handle an enormous amount of air. A grown-up breathes in roughly ten thousand liters of air in one day, which is enough to fill a small room from floor to ceiling. Children breathe a little less in total, but for the size of their bodies, children breathe more air than grown-ups do, because they breathe faster. Whatever is in the air you breathe, your lungs meet it again and again, thousands of times a day.

Your lungs have many guards to help them, as you have seen in this book. The nose filters the air. The escalator of tiny hairs carries dirt away. The cleaner cells in the alveoli gobble up dust and germs. These guards are very good at their jobs. But even the best guards can be overwhelmed if they have to deal with too much dirty air, day after day.

Think about a small stream that flows past a village. If someone throws in a leaf now and then, the water carries it away, and the stream stays clear. If people pour in buckets of mud every single day, the stream turns brown, and it can no longer clean itself. The air you breathe is a bit like that stream, and your lungs are like the village that drinks from it. In this chapter, you will learn about the things that can make the air dirty, and about the everyday choices that help keep your lungs healthy for life.

What Smoke Does Inside the Lungs

Smoke is what you get when something burns. It might come from a campfire, a candle, burning leaves, a cooking fire, a wildfire far away, or a cigarette. Smoke may look like a soft gray cloud, but up close it is made of countless tiny particles of soot and ash, mixed with gases. Many of these particles are so small that they can slip past the nose and travel deep into the lungs.

When smoke reaches the airways, the guards spring into action. The nose and windpipe make more mucus to trap the particles, and you may start to cough. Your eyes may sting and water. These are signs that your body is trying to protect itself. If you ever find yourself near smoke, the best thing to do is to move away from it into cleaner air and tell a grown-up.

Tobacco smoke, the smoke from cigarettes, is especially harmful. It contains thousands of different chemicals, and many of them can damage the body. Doctors and scientists have studied tobacco smoke for a very long time, and they agree that it is one of the most harmful things a person can breathe. Tobacco smoke affects the lungs, the heart and many other parts of the body.

Remember the escalator of tiny hairs in your windpipe, the cilia that sweep mucus up and out of your lungs? Tobacco smoke slows the cilia down. Over time, it can damage them, so that the escalator works poorly or stops in places. When the escalator stops, mucus and dirt build up in the airways. The body tries to clear them by coughing, which is one reason why people who smoke for many years often have a cough that keeps coming back.

Smoke also makes life hard for the cleaner cells in the alveoli. The macrophages try to eat up the smoke particles, just as they eat dust and germs. But when there are too many particles, the macrophages become overloaded, like a cleaner trying to sweep a floor while someone keeps pouring sand on it. Overloaded cleaners are not as good at catching germs, so the lungs become easier for germs to invade.

Smoke can trick the red train too. Burning makes a gas called carbon monoxide, which has no color and no smell. Carbon monoxide can climb aboard the red blood cells in the seats that are meant for oxygen, and it holds on much more tightly than oxygen does. Each seat taken by carbon monoxide is a seat that cannot carry oxygen. This is one more reason why breathing smoke is hard on the body.

Some people use electronic devices that heat a liquid into a mist that is breathed in, often called vapes or e-cigarettes. The mist may look like harmless steam, but it is not just water. It usually contains a substance called nicotine and other chemicals that can irritate the airways. Health experts agree that these devices are not safe for children and young people to use.

When Someone You Love Smokes

Some children have a parent, a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle or a friend who smokes. If someone you love smokes, that does not make the person bad, and it is not your fault. Grown-ups often started smoking when they were young, sometimes before people knew as much about smoking as we do now.

Tobacco contains nicotine, a substance that makes the body want more and more of it. Scientists say nicotine is addictive, which means it is very hard to stop using once the body has become used to it. Many people who smoke wish they could stop, and many try more than once. Stopping takes a lot of courage and patience.

The good news is that the body is very good at healing. When a person stops smoking, the body begins to repair itself. Within days, there is less carbon monoxide in the blood, and over the following weeks and months, the escalator of tiny hairs can start to work better again. Doctors and nurses can help grown-ups who want to stop, and it is never too late for the body to start getting better.

Smoke that drifts from a cigarette, or that someone breathes out, does not stay with the person who is smoking. It spreads into the air that other people breathe. This is sometimes called secondhand smoke. Children's lungs are still growing, and children breathe faster than grown-ups, so they take in more of the air around them. Children who often breathe secondhand smoke are more likely to have coughs, chest infections and, for children who have asthma, more asthma attacks.

Many families who include someone who smokes make simple choices to protect children's lungs, such as keeping homes and cars completely smoke-free. If you ever feel worried about smoke, you can gently tell a grown-up you trust. You do not need to scold anyone or feel that it is your job to fix things. The most important thing you can do is to look after your own lungs and to show love and kindness to the people around you.

Air Pollution: The Haze You Cannot Always See

Smoke from burning is not the only thing that can make air dirty. When air contains harmful particles or gases, people say the air is polluted. Air pollution can come from the exhaust of cars, trucks and buses, from factories and power plants that burn fuel, from burning rubbish, and from natural sources such as dust storms and wildfires.

Some air pollution is easy to notice. You may see a brown or gray haze over a busy road, or smell the fumes from a truck. But some of the most important pollution is invisible. The tiniest particles in polluted air are many times thinner than one of your hairs. Because they are so small, these fine particles can get past the nose, ride down the windpipe and land deep in the lungs, where the macrophages have to deal with them.

On some days, the air is cleaner than on others. Wind can blow pollution away, and rain can wash some particles out of the air. On still, hot, sunny days, sunlight can react with pollution from vehicles and factories to make a gas called ozone near the ground. Ozone high up in the sky helps protect the Earth from the Sun's strongest rays, but ozone near the ground irritates the airways and can make people cough.

Breathing a little dirty air now and then is something your guards can handle. Breathing very polluted air day after day, for months and years, is harder on the body. Scientists have found that it can make it more difficult for children's lungs to grow as strong as they could, and it can make breathing troubles such as asthma flare up more often. This is why clean air is so important for everyone, and especially for children whose lungs are still growing.

In many places, scientists measure the air and share daily reports about how clean or dirty it is. These reports are often called air quality reports. Grown-ups can check them, much as they might check a weather report. On days when the air is very polluted, a grown-up might choose quieter games indoors instead of a long run outside, especially for children who have asthma or other breathing troubles.

If there is ever thick smoke in the air, for example from a wildfire, grown-ups may keep windows and doors closed and keep children indoors until the air clears. Following their instructions helps protect your lungs. If you notice that breathing feels hard, or that you are coughing a lot, tell a grown-up, so that the grown-up can talk to a doctor if they are worried.

Around the world, many people are working to make the air cleaner. Engineers design vehicles and factories that release less pollution. Towns plant trees and build parks and paths for walking and cycling. Scientists invent cleaner ways to make electricity. Clean air is something that people can protect together, and every generation can leave the air a little cleaner than they found it.

Fresh Air at Home

You spend a lot of your time indoors, at home and at school, so the air inside buildings matters too. Indoor air can collect dust, smoke from cooking, fumes from cleaning products, and tiny particles from many everyday activities. Most of the time this is nothing to worry about, but a few simple habits help keep indoor air fresh.

Letting in fresh air is one of the easiest habits. Opening a window for a while, when the outside air is clean, lets stale indoor air flow out and fresh air flow in. Bringing in fresh air from outside is called ventilation. A kitchen fan, or an open window while someone is cooking, helps carry away steam and smoke from the stove.

Damp is another thing to watch for. When walls, ceilings or corners stay wet for a long time, mold can grow. Mold is a kind of fungus, and it can release tiny specks into the air that may make some people sneeze, cough or have trouble breathing. Keeping rooms dry and airy, and telling a grown-up if you see dark spots of mold, helps keep the air healthy.

In many homes around the world, food is cooked over a flame, and some flames make smoke. Wood, charcoal and other fuels can fill a room with smoke if the air has nowhere to go. Cooking in a well-aired space, with a window or door open or a chimney or fan to carry the smoke outside, helps keep that smoke out of everyone's lungs. Children can help by playing a little farther away from the cooking area while food is being made.

Dust is part of every home. Dust can contain tiny bits of skin, fabric, soil and pollen. For most people, ordinary cleaning is enough to keep dust under control. Wiping surfaces with a damp cloth, rather than a dry duster, helps catch the dust instead of sending it back into the air. You can help by tidying your room and keeping toys off the floor so that the floor is easy to clean.

Exercise: Training the Breathing Team

Clean air is one way to look after your lungs. Moving your body is another. When you run, jump, swim, dance, climb or ride a bike, your muscles need more oxygen. Your brainstem tells the breathing pump to speed up, and your heart beats faster to send the red train racing around your body. You breathe harder, and you may feel your chest rise and fall.

Regular exercise trains the whole breathing team. The diaphragm and the muscles between your ribs grow stronger, just as your leg muscles grow stronger when you run often. Your heart becomes stronger too, so it can pump more blood with each beat. Your muscles get better at taking oxygen from the blood and using it. Exercise does not make your lungs much bigger, but it makes your whole body much better at using the air your lungs bring in.

Being active also helps your lungs stay clean. Big, deep breaths during play stretch the tiny air sacs open and help move mucus along so that the escalator can carry it away. Laughing and singing are good for this too. Active play, especially outdoors, is one of the best things you can do for your breathing.

When you can, choose places with cleaner air for active play. A park, a garden, a playground away from heavy traffic, or a quiet path is usually better than the side of a busy road, where exhaust fumes are thickest. Children who have asthma can usually enjoy exercise too, with a plan made by their grown-ups and their doctor.

It is normal to feel out of breath after a race or a fast game. Your heart pounds, your chest heaves, and you may need to stop and rest for a minute or two. Soon your breathing slows back down to its usual pace. That is your body catching up on oxygen and clearing away extra carbon dioxide. But if your chest ever feels tight, if you hear a whistling sound when you breathe, or if your breath does not come back after resting, stop and tell a grown-up.

Most children are encouraged to be active for about an hour every day, in many small bursts or one long game. That hour can be anything that gets you moving and breathing faster: tag, skipping rope, kicking a ball, swimming, dancing in the kitchen or walking with your family. The best exercise is the kind you enjoy, because then you will want to do it again and again.

Small Choices for Big Breaths

Looking after your lungs does not mean worrying about every breath. Your guards handle ordinary dust, pollen and germs very well. What helps most is a set of simple, everyday choices that give your guards a fair chance.

Breathe through your nose when you can, so that the nose can filter, warm and moisten the air. Move away from smoke, whether it comes from a fire, a barbecue or a cigarette, and tell a grown-up if smoke bothers you. Play outside often, in the cleanest places you can find. Help keep your home's air fresh by opening a window with a grown-up's permission when the outside air is clean.

And remember that you never have to try smoking or vaping, even if someone offers it to you or tells you it is grown-up. Saying "No, thank you" is a strong and sensible choice. Your lungs are still growing, and they will thank you for many years to come.

Your lungs are with you for life, and the habits you build now can help them stay strong for a very long time. Every time you play in fresh air, step away from smoke or take a deep, happy breath after a race, you are taking care of the remarkable team inside your chest. In the final chapter, you will travel through the whole breathing journey one more time and meet all your guards together.

Key Words

Smoke: A cloud of tiny particles of soot and ash, mixed with gases, that rises when something burns. Smoke can irritate and harm the lungs.

Particles: Tiny solid bits floating in the air, such as dust, soot or ash. The smallest particles can travel deep into the lungs.

Tobacco smoke: The smoke from cigarettes. It contains thousands of chemicals and harms the lungs, the heart and many other parts of the body.

Carbon monoxide: A gas with no color and no smell that is made when things burn. It takes the place of oxygen on red blood cells.

Nicotine: A substance in tobacco and many vapes that makes the body want more of it, which makes stopping very hard.

Secondhand smoke: Smoke that spreads from someone else's cigarette into the air that other people, including children, breathe.

Air pollution: Harmful particles and gases in the air, often coming from vehicles, factories, burning and wildfires.

Air quality report: A daily report that tells people how clean or polluted the air is in the place where they live.

Ventilation: Letting fresh air from outside flow into a room while stale air flows out.

Exercise: Moving your body in ways that make you breathe faster, such as running, swimming or dancing. It makes the breathing muscles and the heart stronger.