There is an irrefutable correlation between the increasing effects of secondhand smoke on the health and well being of human beings that are constantly in the vicinity of smokers. Evidently, secondhand smoking has undeniably become problematic for a plethora of intense, health-altering reasons that include but are not limited to diseases and early death that are caused to nonsmokers by secondhand exposure from the burning of tobacco. Even the smallest, briefest amount of secondhand exposure causes immediate health implications. Laws that prohibit smoking in public places have been proven to directly improve the health of people in those areas. Secondhand smoking causes an increased risk for heart disease, stroke, SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), asthma, and lung cancer. Annually, over 45,000 nonsmokers die from implications brought about by secondhand smoking. 34,000 of these deaths are deaths from heart disease, 8,000 from stroke, and 7,300 from lung cancer. People of lower socioeconomic status are much more likely to smoke which therefore puts minorities at a higher …show more content…
Policies like the ones being implemented have very positive effects on the states that they are operating in and should be applied to all states. Smoking today is at an all time low, and this is primarily due to the extensive policies implemented to battle the effects of smoking. Socioeconomic status is an individual’s overall standing within a social stratification system. In the United States, income, occupation, education, and assets measure this. Socioeconomic status is the strongest and most consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality across the life course. It is very important to note that these people of lower socioeconomic status tend to occupy the restaurant, non-hospitality, and other industries that secondhand smoking plays a devastating role
5 million people die from smoking annually, along with 600,000 affected by second-hand smoke. Smoking leads to more deaths than guns and texting while driving. Cigarettes main ingredient, tobacco, has over 4,000 chemicals, 51 of them known to cause cancer. When someone begins to smoke most of the time there’s no turning back, as quitting is very difficult. The nicotine in cigarettes forces you to become addicted to smoking and the more you consume, the more you you feel uncomfortable when quitting. This is what makes cigarettes so dangerous. I think cigarettes are the most harmful invention because it slowly kills the user, but most importantly hurts innocent bypassers.
Every year, there are over 400,000 smoking-related deaths in the United States. A large percentage of these are due to lung cancer, whose leading cause is smoking. However, not all deaths are smokers themselves. Anyone in the vicinity can fall victim to second hand smoke. These people, through no action of their own, can have their lives threatened.
Imagine yourself sitting down to dinner at a restaurant. You are sitting down trying to enjoy your dinner when all you can smell is smoke. Not only are you just breathing in the smoke, it is also damaging your body at the same time. Or imagine yourself at your work place, whether it be a restaurant or office, and you are forced to breathe in second-hand smoke the entire time you are there. In this paper you will be informed of the harmful effects of second-hand smoke, and why smoking should be banned from all public places.
Tobacco use and the effects of second hand smoke have been an ongoing issue for many years. Looking at the attitude of the 1950’s and 1960’s when smoking was thought of as cool, suave, mature, etc., there has been a major turnaround in the way society looks at the use of tobacco. Now the issue is not just smoking and the damage to health that it causes, but now there is the additional awareness of what second hand smoke can do to individuals.
Consequences also reach people nonsmokers who are exposed to smoke even involuntarily. Unfortunately, more than 126 million of Americans who don’t smoke are still exposed to the harmful effects of tobacco, whether in their homes by a family member who smokes, or on the streets and in public places by strangers who smoke (CDC, 2007). And the result of this exposure, can be seen in the data published by the World Health Organization (WHO) who reports that more than 600,000 million of deaths are a result of passive smoking, and in 2004, 28% of the children deaths were consequence of second-hand smoke in 2004 (WHO, 2014).
Smoking is one of the leading preventable causes of death in the United States. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths each year in the United States, which are nearly one in five deaths. The problem about smoking is that not only the smokers are affected by the smoke, but non-smokers and children who are exposed to the secondhand smoke; secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke, is smoke from burning tobacco products that can be inhaled from the exhaled smoke by the smoker, mainstream smoke, or sidestream smoke, which is the smoke that comes from a lighted cigar, cigarette, or pipe and is more toxic and dangerous than the smoke that comes from the
Every day in America families’ gathers together to celebrate special events or the accomplishments of one of its members. Many times these special moments can be ruined or brought to an abrupt end due to others nearby smoking. Public spaces should be safe and accessible to all members of society to use without the inconvenience of someone else’s smoking ruining their outing or causing health issues to flare up such as, asthma. People do have the right to choose to smoke if they desire, but nonsmokers have the right to go out to public places with their family and not be exposed to harmful secondhand smoke. Studies have shown that secondhand smoke is just as harmful as smoking and leads to a higher occurrence of cancer and heart disease. Furthermore,
To understand the current culture of smoking at Wilkes University, research about smoking among college students was analyzed, a survey was given to the University body, and a national smoke-free day was held to promote a wave of change towards a smoke-free campus culture. During the Fall 2015 semester, the well-being of Wilkes University was improved with the establishment of a smoking policy. The health problems associated with smoking are reasons why establishing policies on college campuses are necessary.It is no secret that smoking tobacco can harm nearly every organ in the body. Specifically, smoking tobacco can cause autoimmune diseases, affect bone density, harm blood cells and damage the function of the heart. It can also negatively
Some time ago while I could sit in my auto, holding up to lift my little girl from her grade school, and I could take a snappy drag from a cigarette and nobody would take a second look. While I do concede that it is vital for me to roll the windows down, along these lines discharging the result of my lone wellspring of joy into the lungs of youthful youngsters, I should essentially say that I don't trust that second-hand smoke truly is harmful, regardless of the possibility that each and every researcher in the whole world says something else. Sometime in the past I could smoke a cigarette when the evangelist's sermon continued for a really long time, or he talked about a transgression I myself had submitted, in this way bothering me. I could
Secondhand smoke exposure is a matter of health injustice (Wilson, 2010). Everyone deserves protection against health
The negative health effects of tobacco use have been well established. Tobacco use has been shown to cause acute and chronic respiratory disease, heart disease, many types of cancer, and is the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in the United States, causing an estimated 443,000 deaths per year (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2004). As the dangers of smoking have become better understood, reducing the number of people who smoke has become a major focus for those interested in public health. Efforts to restrict the advertisement and sale of tobacco, implement public smoking bans, and educate citizens through public service announcements have all had a sizeable effect on smoking rates in the U.S. In Fact, over
Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the world. Although this lifestyle practice usually warrants a person’s conscious choice to inhale toxic fumes, more than the sole individual are affected by this habit. Passive or involuntary smoking results when bystanders are collaterally forced to also breathe in a product containing at least 70 carcinogens and 7000 chemicals, as a consequence of another person’s smoking (American Cancer Society, 2015). Evidence suggests secondhand smoking (SHS) can lead to “lung, larynx, pharynx, nasal sinuses, brain, bladder, rectum, stomach, and breast cancers” in adults, even though they never smoked firsthand. Although the severity of health abnormalities and illnesses vary due to exposure, the gravity of the repercussions of SHS cannot remain disregarded. The American Cancer Society proposes that due to a child’s pivotal physical, mental, and emotional development, they are “most affected by SHS and least able to avoid it” (2015). In addition to the impediment of a child’s development, environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is potentially linked to the development of “lymphoma, leukemia, liver cancer, brain tumors, asthma, infections, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)” (American Cancer Society, 2015). ETS is literally a grave dilemma plaguing nations.
Tobacco use is still very frequent, especially in low-income areas. Not only is it detrimental for the smokers themselves in terms of health, but also it harms those around them. Some health issues that occur are “lung cancer, heart disease, and colon cancer” (Haskins). For low income areas, smoking is one of the most leading causes of death, but it is a preventable cause. In order to help smokers to quit smoking, Haskin states that one suggestion is to raise the prices of tobacco and cigarettes, and another suggestion, especially for nonsmokers, is to have designated areas for smokers only and to have cities label certain public areas such as parks and common areas to be smoke-free zones. Because tobacco is addictive, receiving and seeking
What is secondhand smoke? Secondhand smoke is a mixture of the smoke from an actively burning cigarette and can also be the smoke exhaled from a smoker. There are two different types of secondhand smoke: Side stream smoke which comes directly from burning tobacco and also Mainstream smoke which is the smoke that the person smoking inhales. Although the smoke that the smoker inhales is very dangerous and harmful to the body, the smoke off of a burning cigarette actually contains more harmful substances due to the smoke not being filtered when coming off of the end of the cigarette. The people being harmed the most by secondhand smoke happens to be children. Children have no choice but to endure the secondhand smoke coming off of their
Approximately 20% of our youth today lives with a family member who smokes. It is estimated that almost half of the U.S. population experiences secondhand smoke every day through the environment they encounter. Many research studies support the notion that cigarette use and secondhand exposure link to health side effects. Cigarette smoke has been especially found to be detrimental to an individual’s cardiovascular and metabolic health. New findings however, show that exposure to cigarette smoke can correlate to weight gain, especially in children. In fact, exposure to secondhand smoke alone has been linked to higher weight gain than the actual habit of smoking.