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Second-Hand Smoke

What is Second-Hand Smoke?

Second-hand smoke is made up of mainstream smoke (the smoke the smoker exhales) and side stream smoke (the smoke coming your way from the end of a burning cigarette). Unless you're holding your breath, when you're near a smoker, you're smoking!

Why is it dangerous?

• There are more than 4000 chemicals in second-hand smoke, including benzene, formaldehyde, and arsenic; more than 50 of these can cause cancer. 1
• Smoke from the burning end of a cigarette has more harmful chemicals in it than the smoke inhaled directly by a smoker through a filtered cigarette.
• There is no safe level of exposure to second-hand smoke.
• Going into another room or opening the window will not protect you from its harmful effects.

Here's just some of the poison you breathe when you're near a smoker.

[nicotine]	This is the addictive chemical.
[carbon monoxide]	the same stuff that comes out of car exhaust pipes - invisible, odourless and deadly.
[ammonia]	found in toilet bowl cleaners and fertilizers!
[cyanide & arsenic]	poisons.
[lead]	a heavy metal known to cause learning disabilities.
[formaldehyde]	used in laboratories to preserve animals for dissection.

What Does Second-Hand Smoke Do?

• In Canada, second-hand smoke exposure causes between 1100 and 7800 deaths per year. One-third of these deaths occur in Ontario. 2

• SECOND-HAND SMOKE in the home causes more symptoms and more attacks in people who have asthma. 3

• It makes people SICK and KILLS them. In Canada, more than 350 people WHO DON'T SMOKE die of lung cancer every year because of people who do. 4

• Second-hand smoke also causes 43,600 cases of BRONCHITIS and 19,000 cases of pneumonia in Canada every year. 5

• Approximately 220,000 ear infections in Canada each year can be blamed on SECOND-HAND SMOKE. 6

• SECOND-HAND SMOKE can cause increased risk of HEART DISEASE and LUNG CANCER in otherwise healthy non-smokers. 7

What Can You Do?

	Ask people not to smoke around you. Tell them why!
	Support family & friends if they try to quit smoking!
	Encourage friends not to start smoking.

References

1. IARC.(2002). Tobacco Smoke and Involuntary Smoking. IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to Humans.
2. Ontario Tobacco Research Unit 2001. Protection from second-hand tobacco smoke in Ontario.
3. www.smoke-free.ca/Second-Hand-Smoke/health_kids.htm accessed Aug. 29, 2007
4. www.smoke-free.ca/factsheets/pdf/Q&A-healtheffects.pdf accessed Sept. 4, 2007
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2006. The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General.