Question: What is the effect of cigarette smoking on lungs?

Katrina Wesencraft answered on 10 Mar 2020:

I used to work in an anatomy lab and a lot of our body donors were smokers. You could always tell just from looking at the lungs if they belonged to a smoker or not. When we removed them from the body, we could see they were darker (some were almost completely black from the tar), smaller and they feel much harder. They also had a lot of scarring (you can get scars on the inside too!). Lungs are supposed to be pale pink, big and and feel like a wet sponge. Their size and sponginess helps with gas exchange, so smoker’s lungs aren’t as good at delivering oxygen to your body. Smoking also paralyses something called the cilia on the inside of your lungs. These are tiny projections (under the microscope they look a bit like tufts of hair) that sweep gunk out of your lungs. When you cough up mucous, it’s because it’s been swept out of your lungs by the cilia. If you smoke and the cilia stop working, the gunk will stay in your lungs.