In the early 1970’s, when smoking was considered socially acceptable, offering someone a cigarette was a way to open conversation. Ashtrays were put in convenient places in living rooms and every table at a restaurant had an ashtray. In those days, only people who had allergies to tobacco smoke and those who had asthma were at all concerned about secondhand smoke. But as time went on, people began to suspect something awry, and scientific studies too began to show many kinds of medical risks for those who breathed secondhand smoke.
In 1972, the Report of the Surgeon General first raised the issue of “passive smoke,” even though the dangers of smoking had been identified in that report many times earlier. Subsequently, a landmark study of the dangers of second hand smoke was done in 1981 by a Japanese scientist, Takeshi Hirayama. He showed that nonsmoking women who were married to men who smoked suffered more lung cancer than those who live with nonsmokers. In general, nonsmokers married to heavy smokers run up to two to three times the risk of lung cancer compared with those married to nonsmokers.
In 1986, the Report of the Surgeon General included a section called “The Health Consequences of Involuntary Smoke. ” It asserted that “environmental tobacco smoke,” (ETS) is a serious health hazard and people should not have to breathe it. The report reviewed data from sixty scientific studies and concluded that passive smoke causes cancer in otherwise healthy nonsmokers. Since then, there have been many scientific studies around the world that showed the dangers of breathing secondhand smoke.
No more was the smoker simply an inadequate and feeble-minded victim of a filthy habit, he was harming others too. The anti-smokers could throw off accusations that they were interfering busybodies and killjoys. Their role was to protect the innocent and defenseless from the selfish smoker. (Carroll, Brealey 26) Today it is estimated that 3,000 cases of lung cancer are caused by passive smoking every year in the United States alone. As many as 35,000 deaths from heart disease each year in the US are due to passive smoking (Ash.org).
Lung cancer and heart disease are just two of the many medical problems caused by tobacco smoke that are recognized today. Technically the smoke that nonsmokers breathe is called secondhand smoke, but it is also called environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Exposure to this smoke is also called passive smoking or involuntary smoking. The smoke consists partly of mainstream smoke or the smoke that is exhaled by the smoker, and partly of side-stream smoke, or the smoke that is emitted between the puffs of a burning cigarette.
When a cigarette is smoked, about half of the smoke generated is side-stream smoke, which contains essentially the same harmful compounds as those identified in mainstream smoke, but in greater amounts. In a way, common sense is more than enough to tell us that if smoke is deleterious for the one who smokes, it would nearly be as or nearly as harmful for one who is being exposed to that smoke from close quarters. Yet numerous empirical studies have corroborated this intuitive inference, showing that exposure to tobacco smoke presents a serious and substantial public health risk.
However, there have also been some studies which could not come up with significant or conclusive evidence. Passive smoking is considered the third leading cause of death in the United States each year. Every eight smokers who kill themselves from smoking take one nonsmoker with them. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified environmental tobacco smoke as a class A carcinogen, along with other known cancer-causing substances such as asbestos, arsenic, benzene, and radon gas.
Of the over 4,000 chemicals released in cigarette smoke in the form of particles and gases, at least 60 are known to cause cancer. And then there is carbon monoxide, a popularly-known deadly substance. Besides respirable suspended particles and nicotine, carbon monoxide (CO) has been the most extensively studied constituent of secondhand tobacco smoke. The contemporary commercial cigarettes in the USA deliver approximately 15 mg CO in mainstream smoke and an additional 50 mg in sidestream smoke. (IARC Monographs 1192) Another popular and potent toxin present in the cigarette smoke is cyanide.