Medical Questions » Smoking Questions » Question No. 939
Question:How dangerous is passive smoking? I share an office with a girl who has a cigarette in her mouth all day long, while I choke and splutter. She says I complain about nothing, but I am concerned that it may affect my health.
Answer:Almost everyone is forced to inhale fumes containing toxins such as formaldehyde, acetone, arsenic, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide and nicotine at some time. You have no choice in the matter, and you have to suffer the consequences, because these chemicals are just a few of the scores of irritants found in cigarette smoke. Fortunately for most of us, the result of passive involuntary smoking is only a minor itch of the nose, a cough or a sneeze, but some people can develop life-threatening asthma attacks, or have theit heart condition aggravated by someone exhaling tobacco smoke in their direction. In some situations, the non-smoker may be more affected than the smoker, as the smoke coming directly from the cigarerte contains more toxins, nicotine and carbon monoxide than that inhaled by the smoker, as the inhaled smoke has been more completely burnt, and passed through a filter. In the workplace, employers are required to provide a safe and healthy work environment, and this can include an area where non-smokers can work. Unfortunately, some bosses still smoke, and have little sympathy for the enforced passive smoking of their employees. This situation may change in the future, as more and more workers are successfully claiming workers compensation payments for the complications of passive smoking in their work place. Smokers should now be aware of the health risks that they are taking every day (90% of lung cancer occurs in smokers), but they can no longer claim personal freedom to smoke where and when they like, as their habit is adversely affecting the health of those around them. In some cases passive smoking can be life threatening, and legal suits against smokers for causing bodily harm have been successful in the United States. POSTSCRIPT: It is 8.30 pm on a Tuesday night, and I have just seen my last patient for the day. Rather than heading home to my family and dinner, I have turned to my keyboard to tell you about a patient I saw eatlier today. He was 68 years old, once a solidly built man, and a bomber gunner during World War Two. He first presented with shortness of breath and a chronic cough some five years ago. He had smoked 20 cigarettes a day since his teenage years. After listening to his chest on that examination some years ago, I sent him for an X-ray. He returned, and after examining the films, I told him the diagnosis— emphysema. Since then he has been slowly dying, fighting a battle with repeated attacks of bronchitis and pneumonia, taking more and more medication, but getting weaker every month. Often he was desperate and scared. Was there some new miracle cure? How long would he take to die? Would it be quick or slow? He already knew the cause—his decades of smoking. No—there was no new miracle cure, only medications to try and control the damage already done. If he stopped smoking, and if he was lucky enough not to catch too many attacks of bronchitis, he had a chance of living a bit longer and more comfortably. I kept giving him scripts for the bronchodilator drugs he would need for the rest of his life. This morning he died. Death from emphysema is not a quick, clean death at an advanced age, but a slow, lingering, coughing, gasping, blue death that takes many months. Please do not risk it—stop smoking now!

       
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