Summary:
According to a study, passive smoking has resulted in 600,000 deaths each year. The study concluded that the final death toll from tobacco was more than 5.7 million people, from poor and rich countries equally . About half of the victims were women, with the rest made up of children and men almost equally. Passive smoking has resulted in heart, lower respiratory infections, asthma and lung cancer. Children from poorer countries are the most affected victims from passive smoking.
My opinions
Some harmful effects of smoking are Heart Attacks, Strokes, Cancer, Emphysema (an illness that rots your lungs gradually), Stomach Ulcers, Amputation because of blocked arteries etc. Smoking when pregnant can increase the baby’s limb deformities 20-fold. It is harming one’s own child even before he or she is born.
Nevertheless, despite a lot of people knowing the harmful effects of smoking, they still smoke for various reasons such as “feeling good” as the increased blood flow of the brain caused an immediate rush of stimulation which can leave the smoker feeling alert and energized. Also, they find it easier to manage stress and some people even find that smoking helps them to manage their weight as it helps to increase metabolism.
However, they should really think about their family members, friends and others who are non-smokers, especially little children who are innocent and unaware of the harmful effects of passive smoking. Smokers are not only harming their health, but also others’ health indirectly. They might think that passive smoking isn’t a great deal but studies have shown that 600,000 people die from it each year. Smoking also pollute the air that everyone breathes in and accelerates global warming. Global warming causes natural disasters, such as drought, which cause more death. Although Singapore did not experience any major disasters, we had experienced flooding in orchard area, and we have rapid temperature changes.
Hence, people have to avoid passive smoking as much as possible and smokers should be encouraged to quit for the sake of their health and others’ health as well. Furthermore, public places such as amusement park, restaurants or coffee shops should be encouraged to provide no smoking areas or restrict smoking entirely to help encourage smokers should quit and to protect non-smokers, especially elderly and children from inhaling the harmful polluted air.
From this article:
600,000 die each year from passive smoking: study
AFP - Friday, November 26
PARIS (AFP) - – Second-hand tobacco smoke kills upward of 600,000 people every year, nearly a third of them children, according to a first-ever global assessment released Friday.
Unlike "lifestyle" diseases, which stem largely from individual choice, the victims of passive smoking pay the ultimate price for the health-wrecking behaviour of others, especially family members.
Among non-smokers worldwide, 40 percent of children, 35 percent of women and 33 percent of men were exposed to second-hand smoke in 2004, the most recent year for which data was available across the 192 countries examined.
When added to the 5.1 million fatalities attributable to active smoking, the final death toll from tobacco for 2004 was more than 5.7 million people, the study concluded.
Nearly half the passive-smoking deaths occurred in women, with the rest divided almost equally between children and men, said the study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet.
Some 60 percent were caused by heart disease and 30 percent by lower respiratory infections, followed by asthma and lung cancer.
All told, passive smoking accounted for fully one percent of worldwide mortality in 2004.
Adult deaths caused by second-hand tobacco were spread evenly across the spectrum of poor-to-rich nations.
But for children, poverty made things much worse, the study found.
The adult-to-child ratio of fatalities in high-income Europe, for example, was 35,388 to 71.
The ratio in Africa was nearly reversed: 9,514 to 43,375.
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