What is second-hand smoke?
Breathing other people's smoke is called passive, involuntary or second-hand smoking. This second-hand smoke is a combination of the smoke from the tip of the burning cigarette (side-stream smoke), and whatever the smoker exhales (main-stream smoke). It contains over 4,000 different poisonous chemicals – approximately 60 of which are proven to cause cancer.
Statistics
Scientific evidence has shown that second-hand smoke has serious effects on the health of non-smokers.
Recent research (Jamrozik, 2005) found that second-hand smoke in the workplace is likely to be responsible for the deaths of more than two employed people per working day (617 deaths per year), including the death of one hospitality worker every week. This research also found that exposure to second-hand smoke at home may cause an additional 2,700 deaths in persons aged 20-64 years and 8,000 deaths among people aged 65 or over.
