Passive Smoking

           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.