Secondhand smoke is the name for the sickening, poisonous smoke given off by a burning cigarette, cigar, or pipe. Smokers may claim to have a right to smoke, but nonsmokers have a more important right to breathe safe air.
The next time one of your friends lights up in front of you, fire off these facts about secondhand smoke.
- Secondhand smoke can produce six times the pollution of a busy highway when in a crowded restaurant.
- Secondhand smoke causes 30 times as many lung cancer deaths as all regulated pollutants combined.
- Secondhand smoke makes clothes and hair stink.
- Secondhand smoke causes wheezing, coughing, colds, earaches, and asthma attacks.
- Secondhand smoke fills the air with many of the same poisons found in the air around toxic waste dumps.
- Secondhand smoke wrecks the smell and taste of food.
- Secondhand smoke causes reddening, itching, and watering of the eyes.
- Secondhand smoke kills about 3,000 nonsmokers each year from lung cancer.
- Secondhand smoke causes up to 300,000 lung infections (such as pneumonia and bronchitis) in infants and young children each year.
