discussion of ‘smokers’ black lungs’ started in the comments today. It’s the widespread belief that smokers’ lungs turn black. Rose pointed out that it all started with James I about four centuries ago. She also dug up some refutations:
“Dr. Duane Carr – Professor of Surgery at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, said this: “Smoking does not discolor the lung.”
Dr. Victor Buhler, Pathologist at St. Joseph Hospital in Kansas City: “I have examined thousands of lungs both grossly and microscopically. I cannot tell you from exmining a lung whether or not its former host had smoked.”
Dr. Sheldon Sommers, Pathologist and Director of Laboratories at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York: “…it is not possible grossly or microscopically, or in any other way known to me, to distinguish between the lung of a smoker or a nonsmoker. Blackening of lungs is from carbon particles, and smoking tobacco does not introduce carbon particles into the lung.”
And Brigitte even found a Youtube video:
There is even this (in German) in which a forensic medic states that these “tar” lungs do not exist.
Rich White’s Smoke Screens reports the same:
This was confirmed by Dr Jan Zeldenrust, a Dutch pathologist for the Government of Holland from 1951 – 1984. In a television interview in the 1980’s he stated that, translated from Dutch, “I could never see on a pair of lungs if they belonged to a smoker or non-smoker. I can see clearly the difference between sick and healthy lungs. The only black lungs I’ve seen are from peat-workers and coal miners, never from smokers”.
Smokers’ lungs used in half of transplants
Almost half of lung transplant patients were given the lungs taken from heavy smokers, with one in five coming from donors who had smoked at least one packet of cigarettes a day for 20 or more years
Despite this, new research shows that those people given the lungs of smokers were just as likely to be alive up to three years after transplantation as those who had organs from non-smokers. In some cases, they had improved survival rates.
“Donor lungs from even heavy smokers may provide a valuable avenue for increasing donor organ availability,” says André Simon, director of heart and lung transplantation and consultant cardiac surgeon at Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust.
“Our findings provide for the first time real world figures for the perceived risk of implantation of lungs from donors with even a heavy smoking history, and they show that such donor lungs may provide a much-needed lease on life to the critically ill patient whose chances of survival diminish with every day or week that passes by on the waiting list.
“I believe that candidates significantly decrease their chances of survival if they choose to decline organs from smokers.”
Lung transplantation is a life-saving therapy for patients with end-stage lung disease, but a shortage of organ donors means people are dying while waiting. UK Transplant Registry data show that only 20 per cent get transplants within six months. The figure rises to 51 per cent after three years, but by that time nearly one in three patients has died waiting for a transplant.
Transplant patients who are given smokers’ lungs (right) are just as likely to survive as those who receive organs from non-smokers (left), a study has revealed. Some patients even had higher survival rates’’http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2550424/Smokers-lungs-just-likely-transplant-patients-alive-non-smokers-organs.html#ixzz3DmLHYLj9