Second Hand Smoking
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Effects of Second Hand Smoke by Len Johnson. Derived from Wikipedia article: "Tobacco Smoking"
Passive smoking (also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), involuntary smoking or second hand smoke) occurs when the exhaled and ambient smoke from one person's cigarette is inhaled by other people. Non-smokers exposed to second hand smoke are at greater risk for many of the health problems associated with direct smoking.
In 1992, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a review of the evidence available from epidemiological and other studies regarding the relationship between second hand smoke and heart disease and estimated that passive smoking was responsible for 35,000 to 40,000 deaths per year in the United States in the early 1980s1.
Non-smokers living with smokers have about a 25 per cent increase in risk of death from heart attack and are also more likely to suffer a stroke, and some research suggests that risks to non-smokers may be even greater than this estimate. One recent study in the British Medical Journal found that exposure to second hand smoke increases the risk of heart disease among non-smokers by as much as 60 percent!2.
Passive smoking is especially risky for children and babies and can cause low birth weight babies, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), bronchitis, pneumonia, and middle ear infections.
Some controversy has attended efforts to estimate the specific risk of lung cancer related to passive smoking. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1993 issued a report estimating that 3,000 lung cancer related deaths in the US were caused by passive smoking every year. Tobacco industry lobbyists, such as the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, and industry-funded researchers, such as S. Fred Singer, aggressively attacked the EPA study as "junk science".
In 2002, a group of 29 experts from 12 countries convened by the Monographs Programme of the International
Effects of Second Hand Smoke by Len Johnson. Derived from Wikipedia article: "Tobacco Smoking"
Passive smoking (also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), involuntary smoking or second hand smoke) occurs when the exhaled and ambient smoke from one person's cigarette is inhaled by other people. Non-smokers exposed to second hand smoke are at greater risk for many of the health problems associated with direct smoking.
In 1992, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a review of the evidence available from epidemiological and other studies regarding the relationship between second hand smoke and heart disease and estimated that passive smoking was responsible for 35,000 to 40,000 deaths per year in the United States in the early 1980s1.
Non-smokers living with smokers have about a 25 per cent increase in risk of death from heart attack and are also more likely to suffer a stroke, and some research suggests that risks to non-smokers may be even greater than this estimate. One recent study in the British Medical Journal found that exposure to second hand smoke increases the risk of heart disease among non-smokers by as much as 60 percent!2.
Passive smoking is especially risky for children and babies and can cause low birth weight babies, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), bronchitis, pneumonia, and middle ear infections.
Some controversy has attended efforts to estimate the specific risk of lung cancer related to passive smoking. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1993 issued a report estimating that 3,000 lung cancer related deaths in the US were caused by passive smoking every year. Tobacco industry lobbyists, such as the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, and industry-funded researchers, such as S. Fred Singer, aggressively attacked the EPA study as "junk science".
In 2002, a group of 29 experts from 12 countries convened by the Monographs Programme of the International