Dec. 03--BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN -- Smoking is dangerous to non-smokers.
I believe this should be one of the health alerts to be carried on cigarette packaging as it certainly will tell the story of the damage tobacco does not only pose to smokers' health but also to the health of those around them through second-hand smoke.
What is second-hand smoke? When a person smokes near you, you breathe second-hand smoke, according to the Healthbeat, the official publication of the Philippine's Department of Health, "It is a combination of smoke from the burning end of the cigarette and the smoke breathed out by smokers. When you breathe second-hand smoke, it is like you are smoking."
It is lethal since it has more than 4,000 chemicals and many of them are toxic and known to be cancer-causing.
To show sceptics, that I am not just letting off steam when it comes to the harmful effects of passive smoking, I will let the World Health Organisation (WHO) experts speak by citing their first study to assess the global impact of second-hand smoke. The report actually gives credence to the truism that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
In a report released last week, WHO researchers found that passive smoking kills an estimated 600,000 people a year. Exposure to the toxic air is estimated to have caused 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 from lower respiratory infections, 36,900 from asthma and 21,400 from lung cancer. For the full impact of smoking, these deaths should be added to the estimated 5.1 million deaths a year attributable to active tobacco use, the researchers said. The saddest part about the findings is that children are the most heavily exposed to second-hand smoke than any other age-group all over the world. Around 165,000 of them die every year due to the poisonous air the adults around them puff out. "Two-thirds of these deaths occur in Africa and south Asia," the researchers led by Annette Pruss-Ustun of the WHO in Geneva wrote in their study.
Ironically, the same study revealed that children's exposure to second-hand smoke is likely to happen at home, where child health should first begin and where the young ones should feel protected. Passive smoking is particularly injurious to the health of children as their bodies are still developing and can absorb higher amounts of the poisons in smoke than adults.
The immune system of infants and children is still fragile and too weak to ward off infections and diseases.
But, the disease-causing consequences of breathing in tobacco smoke harms babies even before they are born. Unborn babies are hurt when their mothers smoke or if others light up a cigarette around their mothers.
Babies born under such conditions are more likely to have lower birth weights and have more health problems such as infections and underdeveloped or weaker lungs. These problems continue as they grow older and even when they become adults.
Babies who grow up gulping the overpowering smell of tobacco smoke are also in danger of suffering from bouts of different sickness like bronchitis, pneumonia, wheezing and coughing, ear infections, meningococcal disease and asthma attack, reported the Healthbeat.
If you think that all these facts are scary, it gets worse.
Early last year, medical experts sent a smoke signal to the medical community about the danger of third-hand smoke. It refers to cigarette by-products that cling to the smoker's hair and clothing as well as to floors, surfaces, carpets, furniture, appliances, fabrics and even children's toys. This smoke remains even after the second-hand smoke has cleared out.
As a coup de grace to end all wonderings if smoking is really detrimental to the health of even non-smokers, Healthbeat reported that "among the substances in third-hand smoke are hydrogen cyanide (used in chemical weapons), butane (used in lighter fluid), toluene (found in paint thinners), arsenic, lead, carbon monoxide, and even polonium-210, a highly radioactive carcinogen".
So a word of advise to parents, if you want to put a stop in your children's exposure to toxic air at home, if you must smoke take your "butt" outside.
The views of the writer are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Brunei Times.
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