Passive Smoking Essay, Research Paper

What is secondhand smoke?

? Secondhand smoke is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of

a cigarette, pipe, or cigar, and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers.

? This mixture contains more than 4,000 substances, more than 40 of which

are known to cause cancer in humans or animals and many of which are

strong irritants.

? Secondhand smoke is also called environmental tobacco smoke (ETS);

exposure to secondhand smoke is called involuntary smoking, or passive

smoking.

Passive smoking artery damage partially heals

Damage to the lining of arteries of young adults caused by passive smoking partially heals 2 years after the exposure to smoke, but the artery lining is still not as healthy as the arteries of people who had never beenexposed to smoke.

60 young adults, all nonsmokers, between the ages of 15 and 39 were used as essential data for further analysis.

Twenty had never been exposed to tobacco smoke at home or in the workplace for any amount of time. Another group of 20 had been passively exposed for at least 1 hour per day for 2 or more years. A third group of 20 had been exposed to smoke at home, work, or both for at least 1 hour per day for 2 years.

The researchers found that dilation of the blood vessels was much better in former passive smokers than in current passive smokers, although both groups were impaired compared with nonsmoking controls.

Not surprisingly, former passive smokers who had been away from smoky environments longer had better arterial function than those who had been exposed to passive smoking as recently as 2 years prior to the study.

“Passive smoking has been consistently linked to an increased risk for coronary heart disease and may be responsible for more than 30 cardiovascular deaths annually in the US alone,” the researchers note.

Secosndhand smoke is a serious health risk to children.

The developing lungs of young children are also affected by exposure to

secondhand smoke.

Infants and young children whose parents smoke are among the most seriously affected by exposure to secondhand smoke, being at increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia and bronchitis. EPA estimates that passive smoking is responsible for between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in infants and children under 18 months of age annually, resulting in between 7,500 and 15,000 hospitalizations each year.

Children exposed to secondhand smoke are also more likely to have reduced lung function and symptoms of respiratory irritation like cough, excess phlegm, and wheeze.

Passive smoking can lead to buildup of fluid in the middle ear, the most common cause of hospitalization of children for an operation.

Asthmatic children are especially at risk. EPA estimates that exposure to secondhand smoke increases the number of episodes and severity of symptoms in hundreds of thousands of asthmatic children. EPA estimates that between 200,000 and 1,000,000 asthmatic children have their condition made worse by exposure to secondhand smoke. Passive smoking may also cause thousands of non-asthmatic children to develop the condition each year.

Pregnant women should be strongly encouraged to avoid spending time in places where people smoke, as u denoted from all the reasearch I’ve gone through. There was a survey made to see weather women have been exposed to passive smoking at home or at work. Women completed a questionnaire about exposure to passive smoking, then researches analyzed the data, they saw hat out of one thousand women which have given birth before and at the same time were exposed to second hand smoking, 70 women had babies with physical and/or mental disabilities.

Cigarette smoke can damage your heart even if youu aren’t a smoker. Research shows that the second-hand smoke that many people are exposed to is enough to produce damage to their cardiovasscular system.

Researchers identsified carbon monoxide and nicotine in environmental tobacco smoke that increases the risk of heart disease. Here are a couple of examples. First, the carbon monoxide competes with oxygen in the red blood cells. It not only reduces the amount of oxygen in the heart, it also makes the heart use oxygen less efficiently.

Researchers say exposure to second-hand smoke causes between 30,000 and 60,000 fatal heart attacks each year and between 90,000 and 180,000 non-fatal heart attacks. Researchers claim exposure to second-hand smoke is the third-leading preventable cause of death after smoking and alcohol abuse.

Researchers from several medical centers studied 1,906 women of which 653 developed lung cancer.

Women married to smokers were a 30% more likely to develop lung cancer than those married to non-smokers. The risk of developing lung cancer increased with the more cigarettes smoked by the husband or the longer the women were exposed to smoke.

In some instances exposures to smoke outside the home carried an even greater risk. Women who were exposed to smokers in the work place had a 39% increased risk of developing lung cancer. Women exposed in a social setting of at least two hours a week for over six months had a 50% greater risk of developing lung cancer than non-exposed women. Finally, women who were exposed to smoke both as a child and an adult had nearly twice the risk of developing lung cancer than women exposed only as adults.

The exposure to passive smoke causes at least 3,000 known deaths a yearaccording to the Environmental Protection Agency. To promote a healthier lifestyle do:

? avoid passive smoke as much as possible

? encourage smokers to try to quit, for their health as well as yours

? prevent children from being exposed to passive smoke on a regular basis

? encourage restaurants, shops, and other social settings to provide no

smoking areas; if they won’t support those that will

Bibliography

Britanica