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Second Hand Smoke Can Be More Dangerous Than What You Think
By Ng Peng Hock
Smoking is bad. This is an undeniable fact. Almost 1 billion men and 250 million women in the world smoke. This represents about 35 percent of men and 22 percent of women in developed countries and 50 percent of men and 9 percent of women in the developing countries. Smoking accounts for nearly 9 million deaths each year, of which half are due to cardiovascular disease.
If I do not smoke, I do not need to worry about it. This statement is only partially right. People may not aware that each time someone smokes, poisons are released into the air. This means that the polluted air is inhaled by the smokers as well as whomever near them.
Second hand smoke (SHS) is the smoke that individuals inhale when sharing the same airspace as smokers. It consists of main-stream smoke, smoke inhaled and exhaled by the smoker, and side-stream smoke that emits from smoldering cigarettes, lit-up cigars and pipes.
Second-hand smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals and at least 43 carcinogens (cancer-causing substances), including formaldehyde, cyanide and arsenic. 50 percent of these toxic chemicals are found naturally in tobacco leaf, while the other half is produced when tobacco is burned. A smoke-filled room can contain up to 6 times the amount of polluted air on a busy highway. Such smoke can take hours or even weeks to dissipate from the polluted rooms.
Second-hand smoke can lead to heart disease, lung cancer, high cholesterol levels, and an extremely high risk of stroke. The risk of heart attack almost doubles if one is constantly expose to second-hand smoke. Recent studies have also shown that second-hand smoke increases the coronary death rate among non-smokers by 20 to 70 percent.
Passive smokers exposed to 20 or more cigarettes a day increase their risk of developing cardiovascular disease by many folds. The intensity of exposure to second-hand smoke and the time lapsed since the last exposure, are also important.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 700 million children are exposed to second-hand smoke. Second-hand smoke can cause a wide variety of adverse health effects in children including bronchitis, pneumonia, middle ear infections, recurrent respiratory problems, worsening cases of asthma, learning difficulties, behavioral problems, and language impairment.
Finally, there is evidence that links exposure to second-hand smoke to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or SIDS (cot death). This was previously thought to be linked but the association is now proven by a new study. Pregnant women exposed to second-hand smoke are predisposed to spontaneous abortions and low birth weight babies.
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