FREE ESSAY ON SECOND HAND SMOKE

SECOND HAND SMOKE

Second Hand Smoke
In the 1950's and 60's scientists gave the people a lot of evidence on the deadly effects
of smoking where the tobacco companies on the other hand tried to put the doubt in
people's minds through the campaigns to show that it is not all true. By the time people
actually decided to take care of their health and finally saw how life-threatening
smoking could be by real life examples, the tobacco companies already got rich from its
sales. Nowadays, nobody doubts that "firsthand" smoke is deadly to your health and it
causes lung cancer and heart disease in adults and asthma and bronchitis in children. Now
the industry is onto the secondhand smoke. Scientists and researchers are representing a
lot of evidence and research that has been done throughout the years showing that the
secondhand smoke can also cause a lung cancer in nonsmokers. The study has been done of
people who have been long exposed to secondhand smoke and it shows that 26 out of 33
published studies indicate a link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. The study
estimates that the people that were breathing secondhand smoke were 8 to 150 percent more
likely to get lung cancer. The tobacco companies are trying to argue the facts and are
still in serious debate about the health hazards of breathing a secondhand smoke. A lot
of anti-smoking organizations are trying to turn smoking in public into a private
activity that does not have to involve nonsmokers breathing secondhand smoke. What is
even more important is that many of these organizations convinced a lot of smokers to cut
back or quit completely. The problem of secondhand smoke is increasing because it is so
common in our society. It makes secondhand smoke the third-ranking cause of lung cancer
among nonsmokers. Mothers who live with a smoking spouse have to realize the ill effects
of secondhand smoke on children even before they are born. The smoking components reach
the developing fetus through the mother. Infants that are born in a smoking environment
weigh less and have a weaker chance of becoming a fully developed child. Secondhand smoke
leads to blood clots and damages arterial linings which are the two most leading factors
in the development of heart disease. The tobacco companies got scared of the effect that
the secondhand smoke research can do to the cigarette makers. The tobacco companies
started their own secret studies on how to fight the growing success of antismoking
activists. They are trying to show the people that there is no definite evidence to prove
that the secondhand smoke can cause lung cancer or any other diseases that the scientists
accuse it of. The tobacco industry is trying to influence the science by commissioning a
research from sympathetic scientists and sponsoring scientific meetings where they try to
carefully bring out their point of view and publish the results in the medical
literature. Only 4 percent of the articles that were published from the meetings that
were sponsored by the tobacco industry said that the secondhand smoke was unhealthy. The
debate on secondhand smoke has reached the boiling point. When different scientists are
using different study designs and different researches and still come up with the same
result, it is time to start paying more serious attention to secondhand smoke. When the
human evidence is combined with the laboratory experiments showing that the secondhand
smoke can cause cancer it is impossible to ignore it any longer. The nonsmokers should
have the right to breathe smoke-free air. It is important to have restrictions on where
people are allowed to smoke and in particular to keep the work place as a smoke-free
environment. The declining rates of smoking show that people can actually quit. Everybody
should make an effort to quit for the sake of the people they love.