● Smoking destroys the vitamin C that a person takes in from food and drink. “One cigarette destroys 25 mg. of vitamin C in the body, which means that 500 mg. are neutralized for every package of cigarettes smoked,” says Richard Lucas in his book Nature’s Medicines. And a report in the American Journal of Digestive Diseases adds that nicotine decreased the ascorbic acid (vitamin C) content of the blood by 24 to 31 percent. Thus smokers are in much greater need of this essential vitamin. “This may explain why those who smoke generally are more prone to infections than those who do not,” says Lucas.

● What about infants whose parents smoke? “Because the brain’s barrier to drugs and the liver, which detoxifies nicotine, are less well developed in infants than in adults,” passive smoking is particularly harmful to them, reports Science News magazine. Damages could range from aversion to certain foods, due to nausea caused by tobacco smoke, to sudden infant death syndrome.