Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Hello!

Welcome to this weblog completely devoted to the issue of the recent ban on public smoking in the US and also other countries. One aspect of this issue is that any kind of secondhand smoking causes health risks in many different people. It is said that more than 45,000 people die per year from secondhand smoke by either heart disease or heart attack. There are more than 200 harmful chemicals in secondhand smoke. Just think, when you walk by someone who is smoking a cigarette and you smell the smoke in the air, you are breathing in TWO HUNDRED different harmful chemicals that are known to cause death.

I am 18 years old. If I have walked by someone smoking a cigarette one time per day for my entire life and inhaled the smoke for at least 40 seconds, I would have inhaled about 6,574 cigarettes. I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. This is a very astonishing number to look at when compared to zero. So, smokers, the next time you light one up, think about how you are producing 2/3 of your smoke into the lungs of someone else.

2 comments:

Brooke said...

I remember about a week ago, I was walking to class in the morning and a girl was puffing a cigarette right in front of me. As I continued to class, I inhaled all of her smoke. Needless to say it was not a great way to start the day. I remember being really frustrated and disgusted at the fact that she had no consideration of others around her who obviously were not smokers and were coughing. Finally, I managed to walk really fast and make my way around her. I think if people want to smoke and risk getting lung cancer that’s there choice, but it is wrong for people to put others at risk who don’t smoke. We should raise awareness about the harms of secondhand smoke and advocate lwas prohibiting smoking in public places.

Healthy Lungs said...

Brooke, I totally agree with what you are saying. When people blow their smoke all around in everyone else's face, they don't exactly take into consideration what other people, who don't smoke, can't stand. If they want to smoke that's fine, but do it where there aren't other people in your direct exhale. There are a lot of people on our campus who are unaware of the specific smoking areas, and we, as students, are the ones who need to make it clear that we don't want this hazardous smoke in our lungs.