Passive smoking, also known as environmental tobacco smoke or secondhand smoke, occurs when a person inhales smoke from other peoples' tobacco products. If you are smoking, and your nonsmoking spouse, lover, child or co-workers are nearby, they will inhale your tobacco smoke and may develop lung cancer and other illnesses associated with smoking.
History
King James I of England denounced tobacco as "dangerous to the lungs" in a 1604 statement, "A Counterblast to Tobacco." Tobacco.org's online book about smoking, "Tobacco Timeline," quotes King James' contemporary, poet Samuel Rowlands, about the effect of passive smoking: "But this same poyson, steeped India weede . . . . breath'd out such a smoke, That all the standers by were like to choke." Smoking became so entrenched in both England and America that smoking cigarettes appeared as a sign of sophistication in 1950s movies.
Modern Era
The first anti-smoking campaigns, between 1950 and 1980, focused on active smokers. In the 1980s, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, and other government agencies began assembling passive smoking research. A 1992 EPA report, "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking," found that passive smoking caused 3,000 U.S. lung cancer deaths every year and 150,000 to 300,000 respiratory infections in young children. A 2006 U.S. Surgeon General report, "The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke," confirmed the EPA's 1992 findings.
Passive Smoking Effects
"Passive Smoking," a Government of South Australia website publication, summarizes recent passive smoking information. Tobacco smoke contains a tar that holds cancer-causing chemicals; carbon monoxide, a substance that lowers the amount of oxygen in the blood; and poisons, including ammonia, hydrogen cyanide and arsenic. Children exposed to passive smoking develop coughing, bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma and middle ear infections at much higher rates than children of nonsmoking parents. The 2006 U.S. Surgeon General's report found that adults exposed to passive smoking were more likely to develop lung cancer and coronary heart disease.
Eliminate Exposure
You may have tried minimizing passive smoking effects by allowing smoking only in designated spaces in your home and office; installing special devices to clean air shared by yourself and nonsmokers; and regularly ventilating buildings that you share with nonsmokers. But the National Cancer Institute's online essay, "Secondhand Smoke: Questions and Answers," says that none of these strategies completely removes secondhand smoke. The only way to keep from exposing the people you care about to passive smoking is for you to stop smoking indoors.
Public Places
Passive smoking is also dangerous to people whom you socialize with in public places. For example, when actor and spinal cord injury activist Christopher Reeve died in 2004, his widow, Dana Reeve, became chairwoman of the Christopher Reeve Foundation and returned to her singing and acting career. But she died unexpectedly of lung cancer in March 2006 at age 45. Dana Reeve was a lifelong nonsmoker and took care of her health. The "Onocology Times" reported that speakers attending the American Cancer Research Association annual meeting in June 2006 attributed Ms. Reeve's death to the years she spent singing before admiring audiences in smoke-filled night clubs. Dana Reeve's fans may have killed her.
References
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking
- National Cancer Institute: Secondhand Smoke: Questions and Answers
- Tobacco.org: Tobacco Timeline: The Seventeenth Century--The Great Age of the Pipe
- Government of South Australia: Parenting and Child Health: Passive Smoking
- U.S. Surgeon General: The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke
