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The Truth About Inhalants

The Truth About Inhalants
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   high interest, readability grades 4 to 5
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   2.98

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    abuse, suicide, commit, teens, cigarette, purpose, fluid, shortly, tests, lighter, correction, harm, alive, deal, trapped, often

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The Truth About Inhalants
By Patti Hutchison 		  
1     Sniffing, huffing, they mean the same thing-inhalant abuse. There are thousands of everyday products that can be abused by sniffing the vapors. Most people have probably inhaled them at one time or another during their everyday lives.
 
2     Things like gasoline, glue, and cleaning products all give off fumes. When these fumes are trapped in a small space and inhaled on purpose, they can make you feel high. This is inhalant abuse. This is dangerous. You can become sick or injured. You can harm your brain. You can even die.
 
3     Cathy and her friends were sniffing one day. All of a sudden, Cathy began to vomit. Her body was trying to get rid of the poison she was putting into it. She couldn't stop vomiting. She passed out. One of Cathy's friends got scared and called her older brother. He came quickly. Thankfully, he knew enough to roll Cathy over on her side. She could have choked on her own vomit and died.
 
4     Cathy was back up again shortly. "I felt horrible. Every muscle in my body hurt. My throat and lips were so sore. But at least I am alive. When I think of what could have happened, I can't believe I was so dumb to do that to my body. My friends and I learned a lesson that night, the hard way," Cathy says.
 
5     Joe was huffing in a garage one night. He was inhaling gasoline. A friend lit a cigarette. Suddenly the vapors caught fire. Joe's face and neck were badly burned. His friend's hands were also burned. Things could have been worse. The whole garage caught fire. Joe and his friend could have been killed.

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