If you are a smoker and find it difficult to quit, even knowing what it will do to your health, you might want to consider the effects of smoking to those of your family and loved ones. Many people have different opinions when it comes to second hand smoke and its effects on others. However, one thing that is bothersome is that the ones suffering the most from smoke exposure are children. Children have no way of avoiding the damages caused by smoke, because they have to remain within the home. As a parent, it is your responsibility to see to it that the children have good health. If you do not stop smoking, you are not doing this.
ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke) is also referred to as second hand smoke. This results in two specific forms. The first is the smoke that is coming from the lit side of the smoking apparatus, either a cigarette or some other form of tobacco, also referred to as side stream smoke. The second is the smoke that is exhaled by you, the smoker, also referred to as mainstream smoke. What many people do not know is that Environmental Tobacco Smoke contains more than four hundred different chemicals. Of these four hundred chemicals, more than fifty contain agents that cause cancer, also known as carcinogens.
What is bad is that Environmental Tobacco Smoke is present everywhere you go. For example, if you are in a smoker's home, in a workplace where smoking is allowed, or other public places such as bowling alleys, casinos, bars, and restaurants. However, many states in the United States are banning any type of public smoking in restaurants and bars, there are some establishments and areas that have not banned this.
As you continue to smoke, not only are you endangering your own health, but of those around you as well. You are increasing their risks of heart disease and lung cancer. Furthermore, in children you are increasing their risks of health issues because their lungs are not yet fully developed. At the same time, children have no choice but to be in the environment you create for them. Infants and children of smokers often have increased risks of asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, and sudden infant death syndrome.
While you may know it, more than three thousand people in the United States die thanks to lung cancer from exhaust smoke. This is true even if the person has never smoked in their life. More than 35,000 Americans die yearly of second hand smoke causing coronary heart disease.
Asthma in children, thanks to smoke exposure is diagnosed to between 8,000 and 26,000 children yearly. 15,000 children are hospitalized each year because of bronchitis caused by exhaust smoke, and some 150,000 to 300,000 children develop bronchitis. These are alarming figures and many people simply do not realize the affects of second hand smoke on others around them. They feel they are only hurting themselves, when in fact; they are hurting every person they meet.
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