Second-hand Smoke
Second-hand Smoke, (also called environmental tobacco smoke or ETS), is a widespread and harmful indoor air pollutant. It is the third leading cause of preventable death, after active smoking and alcohol abuse. Second-hand smoke has no place near children or non-smoking adults.
Exposure to second-hand smoke causes a number of fatal and non-fatal health effects in non-smokers.
• It aggravates pre-existing conditions, such as angina and respiratory diseases.
• It affects pregnancies.
• Recent studies have shown that exposure to tobacco smoke causes more deaths than any other man-made pollutant.
Second-hand Tobacco Smoke and Children
Children feel greater effects of second-hand tobacco smoke because their immunologic and respiratory systems are still under development. The child's lungs are smaller than an adult's and so the dose of second-hand smoke is greater.
Serious effects on the young include:
• increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections, such as bronchitis and pneumonia
• middle ear infection
• chronic respiratory symptoms
• low birth weight
• Children with asthma have their condition worsened, either by additional asthma attacks or greater severity of the attack.
• Some children will develop asthma if they live or spend significant amounts of time in an environment filled with smoke.
Where is it safe to smoke when you have children?
Air pollution levels during smoking in the home and car can approach twice the levels found in smoky bars, creating respiratory hazards for children.
• The only suitable safe second-hand smoke control measures for families are smoking outside the home and the car.
A U.S. analysis** of over 100 reports on pædiatric diseases concluded that children’s exposure to tobacco smoke is responsible for up to:
• 13% of ear infections (approximately 220,000 ear infections in Canadian children)*
• 26% of tympanostomy tube insertions (approximately 16,500 in Canada)
• 24% of tonsillectomies and adenoidectomies (approx. 2,100 Canadian operations)
• 13% of asthma cases (approx. 52,200 cases in Canada)
• 16% of physician visits for cough (approx. 200,000 visits in Canada)
• 20% of all lung infections in children under 5 (approx. 43,600 cases of bronchitis in Canada and 19,000 cases of pneumonia in Canada)
• 136 to 212 childhood deaths from lower respiratory infection (approx. 13-20 in Canada)
Other Health Impacts
• 148 childhood deaths from fires started by tobacco products (approx. 15 in Canada)
• 1868-2708 SIDS deaths‡ (approx. 180-270 in Canada)
• the number of Canadian cases is extrapolated from U.S. estimates
For more information about these fact review information from Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada.
Click here to listen and view Smoke the Fish not the Kids campaign materials.
