Smoking In Public Places:

How It Can Affect Everyone...

In November 2003, the Center for Disease Control (CDC), reported that "using data from national health surveys, the researchers calculated that 8.6 million people in the United States have a serious illness caused by smoking."That's a little bit more than the entire population of New York City." Think of that number for just a moment nearly nine million people, millions, yes that's what I said, millions of people have an illness somehow related/caused by smoking. Wow, staggering huh? You bet. That got my attention.

The CDC went on to say "for smoking, it's incredibly important to meet the 2010 goals because smoking is the leading cause of (preventable) death in this country, and if we can reduce smoking prevalence we can save a lot of lives, said Corinne Husten, MD, a medical officer with the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health. Reducing the smoking rate would also cut the staggering number of Americans living with debilitating diseases caused by tobacco." It didn't say if this included people with illness from second-hand smoke.

Facts from the American Lung Association say that "secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), 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. It is involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers, lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished and can cause or exacerbate a wide range of adverse health effects, including cancer, respiratory infections, and asthma.

Secondhand smoke has been classified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a known cause of cancer in humans (Group A carcinogen).
Secondhand smoke exposure causes disease and premature death in children and adults who do not smoke. Secondhand smoke contains hundreds of chemicals known to be toxic or carcinogenic, including formaldehyde, benzene, vinyl chloride, arsenic ammonia and hydrogen cyanide.

Secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year.

Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at work are at increased risk for adverse health effects. Levels of ETS in restaurants and bars were found to be 2 to 5 times higher than in residences with smokers and 2 to 6 times higher than in office workplaces." (italics mine)

It's when we go to these restaurants, bars or to our own places of work that allow smoking inside we become exposed. I say ban smoking from inside the premises entirely. In Utah, when I lived there, ten years ago, they began to ban smoking in restaurants. The only places that could allow smoking had to become clubs, even diners/restaurants and had to display a sign on the entrance "this is a smoking establishment". This I think is a great alternative for smokers. If select restaurants actually have a ninety percentile clientele of smokers it may be worth the establishments effort/cost to do something like that, if the state allows it as an alternative. I now live in Idaho. Here the bars, a few restaurant and most of the bowling alleys have an area/patio established outside where people can step out and have a smoke. Another great alternative as long as the person stays in the air long enough to air out. Or spray off with some cinnamon air freshener. Recently the hospital here went to a non-smoking establishment, offering it's smoking employees free classes to kick the habit. You can't smoke anywhere inside nor outside on the entire campus either.

I've worked in the healthcare field for many years, and have seen many illnesses related to cigarette smoking. According the the American Lung Association "secondhand smoke is responsible for between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in infants and children under 18 months of age, resulting in between 7,500 and 15,000 hospitalizations each year, and causes 430 sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) deaths in the United States annually.
Secondhand smoke exposure may cause buildup of fluid in the middle ear, resulting in 790,000 physician office visits per year.10 Secondhand smoke can also aggravate symptoms in 400,000 to 1,000,000 children with asthma."

The CDC went on to further report that "most of those people - about 59% - have either chronic bronchitis or emphysema, lung conditions that make breathing difficult and can be deadly. Smoking-related cancers accounted for 13% of the serious diseases; more than 1.5 million people are affected.

Among cancer cases, lung cancer accounted for only 1% of cases (184,000 people). Yet lung cancer strikes nearly 172,000 Americans each year, and kills more people than any other cancer. Why weren't the numbers in the survey higher?
Hyland has one explanation. "The reality is, if you have lung cancer, the survival is just a few months."
Lung cancer is frequently not found until it is advanced, when it kills quickly. Many patients simply don't survive long enough to be found by surveys like the ones used to collect this data.

This is the first time researchers have tried to quantify the chronic health effects of smoking, as opposed to looking at the number of deaths it causes. But as shocking as the figure is - 8.6 million Americans with serious illnesses - Hyland says it probably understates the problem.
"Our estimates, I think, are very conservative," he said.

The surveys only looked at a handful of serious smoking-related illnesses, he explained, and did not include less debilitating conditions, like sinusitis, impotence or impaired wound healing. Also, only diseases related to smoking were included; if the researchers had also included diseases related to other tobacco products, like chewing tobacco or snuff, the numbers would have been higher, Hyland said."

I'm a non-smoker, I've got grown kids who are smokers and have always had them go outside, even in the winter to smoke. Cigarette smoke gives me migraines. Smokers do have rights too I realize that, however, they must realize what it is doing to themselves and other people around them also. The statistics above should at least make you stop and think about smoking to some degree. Whether it be that you should quit for the sake of your own health or at least think of those around you when you do light up.

www.cancer.org(re:CDC report)
www.lungusa.org (re:Second Hand Smoke facts)

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