Surgeon General Warns that Even Inhaling is BAD: A December 9 report says there's no doubt that tobacco smoke begins poisoning immediately as more then 7,000 chemicals in each puff rapidly spread through the body to cause cellular damage in nearly every organ. "That one puff on that cigarette could be the one that causes your heart attack," said Surgeon General Regina Benjamin. OR the one that causes someone else's: "I advise people to try to avoid being around smoking any way that you can," she said. About 443,000 Americans die from tobacco-caused illness every year. About 46 million adults -one in five- still smoke, and tens of millions more are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke. It's become clear that some of the harms- especially those involving the heart-kick in right a3way, said Dr. Terry Pechacek of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. That means social smoking, the occasional cigarette at a party, can be enough to trigger a heart attack in someone whose arteries already are silently clogged, he said. (See entire article in Record Eagle December 16,2010)