Secondhand Smoke

In many ways, secondhand smoke is more dangerous to your health than smoking itself.

How can that be?

Let me explain.

What Is Secondhand Smoke?

It's essentially a type of air polution. You come in contact with it when you breathe smoke from someone else's burning cigarette, cigar, or pipe. It also involves breathing smoke exhaled by smokers. It’s a secret danger, because until the last ten years or so, most people thought it was okay to breathe in smoke as long as they weren’t the one actually doing the smoking.

Not true!

The problem is when a smoker inhales smoke, only about half of the smoke created is actually inhaled. The other half just floats around in the air.

Just because you’re not actually sucking up the smoke yourself does not change its chemical composition. Cigarette smoke has over 4,000 known chemical compounds in it, 200 of which are poisons and around 60 of which are known carcinogens.

Is It Dangerous?

Yes!

You can get cancer from it, just as you can from directly smoking. These types of cancers include:

• Lung cancer (3,000 nonsmokers die every year from lung cancer)
• Nasal sinus cavity cancer
• Cervical Cancer
• Breast Cancer
• Bladder Cancer

Caner’s not the only disease you have to worry about, though.

It’s estimated that over 35,000 deaths per year from heart disease are caused by secondhand smoke.

It’s been linked to narrowing of the carotid arteries—the ones that take the blood to the brain.

It can cause hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis).

Continued exposure to it can double your chances of heart attack.

In other words, thousands of Americans die each year from smoking related diseases, yet they never smoked. They just were exposed to smoke either at home or at work, or somewhere else. To learn more read this article about what the EPA thinks about all of this.

Secondhand Smoke And Children

Children of any age don't need to breathe tobacco smoke.

It can cause all sorts of medical problems:

• Low birthweight
• SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)
• Respiratory Infections
• Asthma
• Chronic respiratory symptoms, coughing and wheezing, for instance
• Ear Infections

I can talk about this from very personal experience.

I grew up in a house of three smokers. My dad, my mother, and an uncle all filled the house with cigarette smoke.

As a kid, I suffered from almost chronic respiratory infections and middle ear infections. I developed asthma as I grew older. I couldn’t run as well as other kids because I started wheezing.

My parents were great! They really loved me. This was years ago, just when the bad news about smoking was breaking out.

My parents would have never done anything to hurt me. They just didn’t know.

So, I’m a victim of secondhand smoke.

The bottom line is this: you don't even have to be a smoker to suffer from smoking. Also, as a smoker, you might easily be hurting people you love.

What's the solution?

Well, the best solution is quit!

Explore this site. I'm sure you will find information to help you.

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