Lung Presentation
Middle School
What to say when making a presentation…
Pink – Healthy Lungs
- We get the lungs from a meat packing plant. We get the lungs after the pig has already been butchered.
- The pig lungs are equivalent to a 150 pound person.
- We use pig lungs because the insides of a pig are very close to the insides of a human.
- While pumping, point out that…
- The lungs are easy to pump full of air.
- They get very full and they stay full for a long time.
- (Squeeze the lungs gently and explain how the lungs are elastic and fill right back up – then say) The pink lungs will stay pink forever as long as the person does not smoke and stays away from second hand smoke.
Black – Unhealthy/Smokers’ Lungs
- We did not make the pig smoke, we sent a pair of healthy lungs to a scientific laboratory and they were injected with the ingredients in tobacco smoke.
- Although every one’s bodies are different and react to the poisons in tobacco and marijuana smoke differently. Some people get sick from smoking in 2-3 years, others 30 years. These lungs are approximately 10-15 years of smoking cigarettes. Smoking marijuana can make your lungs look just like this and possibly worse.
- When someone smokes marijuana they inhale deeply right? What this means is the tar and all of the chemicals go deeper into the lungs and stay in the lungs longer, which means more chance of lung cancer.
- The white thing on the diseased lung is a cancerous tumor. If this was in a human and this tumor was not removed, the tumor would spread and eventually kill the person.
- The black lungs are hard at the bottom because of internal tumors that have grown and blocked off the bottom portion of the lung.
- While pumping, point out that…
- The lungs are harder to pump full of air and that they do not get as full as the pink lungs did.
- Smokers’ Wheeze (the air quickly leaking out of the black lung) happens because the chemicals in cigarettes and or marijuana have eaten holes into the lung. This is a sign of emphysema – a non-curable, deadly lung disease. Your lungs are made of millions of air pockets (a lot like a sheet of bubble wrap). The chemicals in tobacco and marijuana smoke start popping these air sacks, just like popping the bubble wrap. And just like bubble wrap, there is no way to fix the broken air sacs. In fact 80% of all smokers have some form of emphysema.
- Smokers’ Cough: “Do you know a smoker that coughs a lot when they wake up in the morning?” This happens because in the body of a smoker the cilia, which works like a broom in the airway to keep out harmful chemicals, starts to slow down and not work anymore. So, the poisons are not cleared out of the airway. Coughing happens because the lungs are trying to clear away the poison built up from the day before.
Every 8 seconds someone dies from a tobacco related illness!
