Secondhand Smoke Kills More Than 600,000 A Year

I used to spend my afternoon around outdoor cafes until the other day, when I was trying to enjoy my Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino that I realized I was surrounded by smokers. I couldn’t ask them to stop since it was a smoking-permitted area. But perhaps I should have anyway by telling them secondhand smoke kills more than 600,000 lives each year around the world. This is accountable for 1 percent of all deaths. More sadly, 40 percent of children regularly are exposed to secondhand smoke and that more than 30 percent of non-smoking men and women are too.

Here’s I provide detailed figures associated with passive smoking:

-379,000 deaths from heart disease

-165,000 deaths from lower respiratory disease

-36,900 deaths from asthma

-and 21,400 deaths from lung cancer a year

Passive smoking has other deleterious effects. Children exposed to smoke by their parents have a higher risk of bronchitis and asthma, sudden infant death syndrome, and ear infections. Their lung development can also be hindered.

Now I stop visiting cafes or restaurants that have too many smokers gather around. I do believe that as smokers are growing in number and it’s hard to ask them to quit, the restaurants or cafes have to bear their responsibility to build secondhand smoke preventive facilities for the sake of all eaters. Simply dividing the areas into non- and smoking-areas is not enough as smoke can easily go around. Smoke cabins or lounges that have strong filtering systems will be a complete solution for exterminating the problem.