Second Hand Smoking
In the 1950's and 60's scientists gave the
people a lot of evidence on the
deadly effects of smoking where the tobacco
companies on the other hand tried to
put the doubt in people’s minds through
the campaigns to show that it is not
all true. By the time people actually
decided to take care of their health and
finally saw how life-threatening
smoking could be by real life examples, the
tobacco companies already got
rich from its sales. Nowadays, nobody doubts that"firsthand" smoke is deadly to
your health and it causes lung cancer and
heart disease in adults and asthma
and bronchitis in children. Now the industry
is onto the secondhand smoke.
Scientists and researchers are representing a lot
of evidence and research
that has been done throughout the years showing that
the secondhand smoke can
also cause a lung cancer in nonsmokers. The study has
been done of people who
have been long exposed to secondhand smoke and it shows
that 26 out of 33
published studies indicate a link between secondhand smoke and
lung cancer.
The study estimates that the people that were breathing secondhand
smoke were
8 to 150 percent more likely to get lung cancer. The tobacco
companies are
trying to argue the facts and are still in serious debate about
the health
hazards of breathing a secondhand smoke. A lot of anti-smoking
organizations
are trying to turn smoking in public into a private activity that
does not
have to involve nonsmokers breathing secondhand smoke. What is even
more
important is that many of these organizations convinced a lot of smokers
to
cut back or quit completely. The problem of secondhand smoke is
increasing
because it is so common in our society. It makes secondhand smoke
the
third-ranking cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers. Mothers who live
with a
smoking spouse have to realize the ill effects of secondhand smoke on
children
even before they are born. The smoking components reach the
developing fetus
through the mother. Infants that are born in a smoking
environment weigh less
and have a weaker chance of becoming a fully developed
child. Secondhand smoke
leads to blood clots and damages arterial linings
which are the two most leading
factors in the development of heart disease.
The tobacco companies got scared of
the effect that the secondhand smoke
research can do to the cigarette makers.
The tobacco companies started
their own secret studies on how to fight the
growing success of antismoking
activists. They are trying to show the people
that there is no definite
evidence to prove that the secondhand smoke can cause
lung cancer or any
other diseases that the scientists accuse it of. The tobacco
industry is
trying to influence the science by commissioning a research from
sympathetic
scientists and sponsoring scientific meetings where they try to
carefully
bring out their point of view and publish the results in the
medical
literature. Only 4 percent of the articles that were published from
the meetings
that were sponsored by the tobacco industry said that the
secondhand smoke was
unhealthy. The debate on secondhand smoke has reached
the boiling point. When
different scientists are using different study
designs and different researches
and still come up with the same result, it
is time to start paying more serious
attention to secondhand smoke. When the
human evidence is combined with the
laboratory experiments showing that the
secondhand smoke can cause cancer it is
impossible to ignore it any longer.
The nonsmokers should have the right to
breathe smoke-free air. It is
important to have restrictions on where people are
allowed to smoke and in
particular to keep the work place as a smoke-free
environment. The declining
rates of smoking show that people can actually quit.
Everybody should
make an effort to quit for the sake of the people they love.