Lung cancer is one of the leading cause of death in America today. On each pack of cigarettes that a consumer purchases, they will see a huge label in the front of the packet that states,“smoking kills,” and behind the packet it states, “causes heart attacks, lung cancer, throat cancer, and may also lead to sudden strokes.” The cells in their body react very quickly to the smoke that comes from the cigarettes. The tobacco slowly kills the cell, making each cell die one by one. The smoke also causes the cell to reproduce unusually. There are some cells that do not die immediately, instead they produce too many at once. This is called cancer. The body part most affected by smoke is the lung. The mutation is in the DNA within the cells.The possible effects on the body are coughing, pain in the chest, a change in color or volume of sputum, shortness of breath, changes of voice or being hoarse, harsh sounds with each breath, recurrent lung problems, coughing up phlegm or mucus, or coughing up blood. This is an environmental and health problem because when people choose to smoke, it effects the environment. This also causes global warming from all the tobacco seething out the paper. This is a health problem because some people can also get lung cancer from second hand smoking. Second hand smoke is when a person inhales the toxins from the cigarette that someone else has smoked. Lung cancer can be diagnosed with a screening procedure called a biopsy. A biopsy is when a small piece of tissue from the lung is examined under a microscope looking for cancer cells. A biopsy can be performed in many different ways; one way is when the doctor passes a needle through the skin into the lungs to remove a small piece of tissue, this procedure is called needle biopsy. One hundred fifty-eight thousand six hundred eighty-three people die from lung cancer each year. Smoking is responsible for eighty-five percent of those who have died from lung cancer. Sixty percent of the eighty-five percent are from those who have never smoked or have quit smoking years prior to their death. This percentile states why lung cancer is the leading cause of death in America today.