According to "your Health is in your Hands by Willies, Anxiety has been amounting for a number of years in the
belief that “passive” or rather “side-stream” smoking has an ill effect on the
non-smoker. These anxieties however are not groundless. A research results
shown recently by British Medical journal editorial points out that cigarette
smoke does contains over one thousand substances and that some of the these
includes, the tar, carbon monoxide, and nicotine, are always found in a more
concentrated form in the side stream smoke. Cacinogens such as nitrosamines
have been found to be about fifty times much greater in concentration than in
the main stream smoke. The editorial reports showed that the “investigators
estimated that during one hour in a smoke room a non-smoke may inhale
nitrosamines in the quantities equivalent to smoking about fifteen filter
cigarettes; and nitrosamines in the air of an indoor room polluted by tobacco
smoke may be over eighty time much higher than in the home of a non-smoker.”
A number of recent studies does highlights the dangers of
face by non-smoker in response to smoky homes and workplaces. New Zealanders
who had never smoked were the subject of one such study. Their incidence of
lung cancer and ischaemic heart disease was raised where the non-smokers worked
or lived in smoky environments.
Calculating the risk.
Obviously it is difficult to calculated the risk
that the non-smoker runs as it is well nigh impossible to quantify the precise
amount of exposure each individual receives, but D.T. Janerich and colleagues
have come up with a new idea for calculation which may help to place people and
disease patterns in some perspective.
They multiply the number of years an individual
spends in a smoking residence by number of smokers in households. Coining a new
phrase of “Smoker years: they estimate that a person having twenty five or more
smoker years during childhood and adolescenece has double the risk of lung
cancer compared to anon smoker not similarly exposed to cigarette smoke. The
same study also reported that about 17 % of lung cancer occurring among the
non-smokers were attributable to the high level of cigarette smoke exposure
during the childhood years.
Dr Jean Golding, a Briton researcher, reporting on
the examination of placentas from women who had smoked during pregnancy, showed
that there was a good reason to believe that smoking was implicated in the
premature birth and that the foetal
development was retarded by the clumping of blood cell. Using multiple sources
Golding further states that 2.04 per 1,000 babies born to women who smoked and
in association with other common factors, developed cancer before the age of
10. Other studies show that children born to mothers smoke have two and half
times greater likelihood of developing cancer. In homes where smoking is is a
regular feature there are greater incidence of lower profile conditions such as
“glue-ear” in children. Through the years of the non-smoker suffers sore eyes,
headaches, running nose, sneezing and itching, stuffiness, coughs, and wheezing
.contact lens wearers are particularly susceptible to the effects of smoke on
the eyes. Passive smoking accelerates atherosclerosis and other circulatory
problems.
Smoke free:
It makes sense in the light of the foreign to keep
works-places and as far as possible, homes free from tobacco smoke. A recent
trend is the establishment of smoke free workplaces and the banning of smoking
in the public. Coincidentally most traders actually agree with this decision
and are always prepared to cooperate. Others however disagree that they are
being denied their rights end at their neighbor’s nose. A recent Scottish study
showed that about 760 businesses out of 850 surveyed had implemented either
formal or informal smoking policies. Other areas show similar trends. This
spells good news for the literally long suffering non-smoker.

