Like a squishy balloon: Pig lungs make a big anti-smoking impression
By FRED HANSON
The Patriot Ledger

RANDOLPH - The first lung was pink, healthy, easily expanded and deflated, and disgusting enough for a group of middle school students.

Then Dr. James Mitterando put the second lung on display. Like the first, it had been taken from a pig, but this one was black, and it took longer to inflate and deflate.

‘‘This is what a smoker's lung looks like,'' Mitterando said.

Then he pointed to a white spot smaller than a dime on the ‘‘smoker's'' lung.

‘‘That's a tumor,'' Mitterando said. ‘‘We see this all the time.''

Students got the chance to put on surgical gloves and feel the lung.

‘‘It felt all nasty,'' said Jason Toussaint, 12. ‘‘It felt like a squishy balloon.''

The lesson Mitterando was teaching yesterday at Randolph Community Middle School, ‘‘Smoking: Don't Go There,'' was developed by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is intended to discourage young people from developing the cigarette habit.

Mitterando's presentation coincided with the American Cancer Society's 27th Great American Smokeout, a campaign with roots in Randolph.

Mitterando, who is affiliated with Cohasset Family Practice Associates of Healthcare South and South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, talked about how tobacco companies try to sell young people on the image of smokers as cool and stylish.

‘‘They're trying to market to you because you're the future buyers of cigarettes,'' he said.

He pointed to statistics showing that nearly three-quarters of teens have tried smoking, and he talked about the addictive qualities of cigarettes.

‘‘Once you're hooked, it's really hard to give it up,'' he said.

To give the class an idea of smoking's effects on lungs, he had the students pinch their noses and try to breathe through a drinking straw. He also displayed a jar containing a thick black fluid that represented one year of the tar that builds up in the lungs of a regular smoker.

It's not just the lungs that are damaged by smoking, Mitterando said. He said smoking doubles the risk of heart attacks and strokes, and can cause complications for pregnant women.

‘‘It affects every part of your body,'' he said.

Second-hand smoke harms those who live with or come into contact with smokers, he said.

The Randolph Community Middle School has been offering the program for four years, said Lisa Carney, an EMT in the school nurse's office. Although not many of the school's seventh- and eighth-graders would admit to smoking, she sees smoking's effect on students with asthma every day, she said.

Carney hopes yesterday's presentation ‘‘will turn some heads.''

‘‘I know for a fact that a few (students) have stopped (smoking) because of it in past years,'' she said.

What Jason Toussaint got out of the program was a simple message.

‘‘If I smoke, I could easily die,'' he said.

The first smokeout took place on Feb. 18, 1970, when a group of Randolph High School students, along with the town's Rotary Club and the American Cancer Society, urged smokers to give up the habit for a day and donate the money they saved for scholarships.

The event raised $4,500 for scholarships and generated national publicity. Former Randolph High School Guidance Director Arthur Mullaney said he got the idea for the fund-raiser thinking about all the cigarette butts he would see on the beach in Kingston and how rich he would be if he had a nickel for each one.

‘‘I doubt those first smokeouts cured anyone, but it was the first shot in the battle to cure smoking in the world,'' Mullaney said.

Fred Hanson may be reached at fhanson@ledger.com.

Copyright 2003 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Friday, November 21, 2003