Secondhand Smoke

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Secondhand Smoke

Heather* had never touched a cigarette in her entire life. She lived in a house with non-smoking parents, and was never exposed to significant amounts of tobacco in her youth. However, Heather spent a good deal of her early adult life with chain-smoking companions in smoke-filled bars and clubs.

Jump to Heather’s life at age 33. With no warning, she was diagnosed with lung cancer after a random chest x-ray taken due to heart palpitations.

“My heart was fine, but the x-ray showed a tiny three-centimeter spot on my upper right lung,” said Heather.

Heather’s doctors told her that exposure to secondhand smoke possibly could have contributed to her development of lung cancer, but in non-smokers it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact cause.

Most Americans have been told a million times that smoking is deadly. Hundreds of projects and programs have been set up nationwide to encourage people to not smoke cigarettes or to quit smoking if they have already started.

However, the dangers of smoking do not necessarily just lie in the lungs of the person smoking the cigarette. Secondhand smoke is just as deadly, if not more so.

According to the American Cancer Society, the actual makeup of secondhand smoke emissions can be considered more dangerous than the smoke that is initially inhaled through the cigarette. It’s a mixture of two forms of smoke that burn from the tobacco product -- mainstream smoke and sidestream smoke. It is also known as environmental tobacco smoke or passive smoke. Mainstream smoke is the smoke exhaled by the smoker. Sidestream smoke is the smoke that comes from the lighted tobacco product. The mixture of smokes contain more than 4,000 substances, 40 of which are known to cause cancer.
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...Heather who can possibly attribute her diagnosis of lung cancer to exposure to secondhand smoke.

But Heather is one of the lucky few who was able to bounce back from her illness. She is now 35 years old. After six months of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, she was declared in remission from her lung cancer, and has been in remission for the past 17 months.

Others, however, are not as lucky as Heather, and make up the about 50,000 people a year who die of illness attributed from secondhand smoke. This is not necessarily a problem that can be fixed with a single solution. The only permanent end for those who suffer from secondhand smoke exposure would be the complete elimination of cigarettes and tobacco. Until then, the only solution is to avoid exposure when at all possible and to educate those who are unaware to the imminent dangers of secondhand smoke.

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