Secondhand smoke is dangerous, especially for children. The
best way to protect loved ones is to quit smoking. At the very least, make sure
you have a smokefree home and car.
When you smoke a cigarette (or roll-up, pipe or cigar), most
of the smoke doesn't go into your lungs, it goes into the air around you where
anyone nearby can breathe it in.
Secondhand smoke is the smoke that you exhale plus the
"sidestream" smoke created by the lit end of your cigarette.
When friends and family breathe in your secondhand smoke –
what we call passive smoking – it isn't just unpleasant for them, it can damage
their health too.
People who breathe in secondhand smoke regularly are more
likely to get the same diseases as smokers, including lung cancer and heart
disease
Pregnant women exposed to passive smoke are more prone to
premature birth and their baby is more at risk of low birthweight and cot
death
And children who live in a smoky house are at higher risk of
breathing problems,asthma and allergies
How to protect against secondhand
smoke
The only way to protect your friends and family from
secondhand smoke is to keep the environment around them smoke free.
The best way to do that is to quit smoking completely. If
you're not ready to quit, make every effort to keep your cigarette smoke away
from other people and never smoke indoors or in the car.
You should:
- always smoke outside
- ask your visitors to smoke outside
- not smoke in the car or allow
anyone else to
The risks of passive smoking
Secondhand smoke is a lethal cocktail of more than 4,000
irritants, toxins and cancer-causing substances.
Most secondhand smoke is invisible and odourless, so no
matter how careful you think you're being, people around you still breathe in
the harmful poisons.
Opening windows and doors or smoking in another room in the
house doesn't protect people. Smoke can linger in the air for 2 to 3 hours
after you've finished a cigarette, even with a window open. Also, even if you
limit smoking to one room, the smoke will spread to the rest of the house where
people will inhale it.
Children and passive smoking
Passive smoking is especially harmful for children as they
have less well-developed airways, lungs and immune systems.
Children who live in a household where at least 1 person
smokes are more likely to develop:
- asthma
- chest infections – like pneumonia and bronchitis
- meningitis
- ear infections
- coughs and colds
Children are particularly vulnerable in the family car where
secondhand smoke can reach hazardous levels even with the windows open.
To protect children, a new ban on smoking in cars and other
vehicles carrying children was introduced in October 2015. It is now
against the law to smoke in a private vehicle if there's a young
person under 18 present.
How safe is
e-cig vapour?
Smoking e-cigarettes,
also known as vaping, doesn't produce tobacco smoke so the risks of passive
smoking with conventional cigarettes don't apply to e-cigs.
Research into this
area is ongoing, but it seems that e-cigs release negligible amounts of
nicotine into the atmosphere and the limited evidence available suggests that
any risk from passive vaping to bystanders is small relative to tobacco
cigarettes.
In England, the
Government has no plans to ban vaping indoors (although some employers have
banned them in the workplace) but some health professionals recommend avoiding
using them around pregnant women, babies and children.