Many stay away from smoking but still end up getting exposed to other people smoking in their surroundings. (Source: Getty Images/Thinkstock)Every year, May 31 is observed as World No Tobacco Day in a bid to inform the public about the dangers of consuming tobacco. This year, it is being observed with the theme ‘Tobacco is killing us and our planet‘.
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Tobacco smoke, consisting of harmful substances like benzopyrene, lead, carbon, monoxide arsenic and formaldehyde, is extremely injurious to health. As such, many stay away from smoking. They, however, still end up getting exposed to passive smoking. While many link passive smoking only with lung cancer, it is actually much more likely to cause heart disease or stroke, according to Dr Pankaj Batra, Senior Consultant, Cardiology, Fortis Escorts Hospital, Faridabad.
“Passive smoking refers to the involuntary inhalation of smoke from cigarettes or other tobacco products smoked by other people. The definition includes exposure to both secondhand and thirdhand smoke, as well as in-utero exposure of a fetus due to the presence of tobacco toxins in the mother’s blood. Secondhand smoke is the combination of smoke from the burning end of a cigarette and the smoke breathed out by smokers. Secondhand smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals,” he said.
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While everyone is at risk when exposed to passive smoking, those who already have heart disease are more prone to suffering adverse effects (File) Quoting a CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) report, he said, “Secondhand smoke is thought to cause 34,000 deaths from heart disease and 8,000 deaths from strokes in non-smokers in the United States each year, with numbers even higher being reported by the World Health Organization.”
Dr Batra highlighted the worrying increase in heart ailments due to passive smoking. “Passive smoking raises the risk of heart disease by 25 to 30 per cent and the risk of stroke by 20 to 30 per cent. The risk of peripheral arterial disease is increased as well. People are actually 15 times more likely to die from heart disease due to passive smoking than lung cancer.”
While everyone is at risk when exposed to passive smoking, those who already have heart disease are more prone to suffering adverse effects and should take special precautions to avoid even brief exposures, the expert said. “Even exposures of less than 30 minutes can cause detectable changes in blood vessels that are associated with heart disease, so again, no level of exposure is safe.”
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