Passive Smoking is a Killer

We live in a society with a more than fair share of people who smoke cigarettes. Ask the average person who smokes, "don't you know that smoking is harmful?" he will reply that he knows it all but can't get rid of it since it is addictive. Well that doesn't mean people who previously smoked have never quit, does it? It is always a question of priorities, a question of whether your realisation of the harms done to people including others, outweighs the feeling of addiction. Next time, try a different question to the person, "do you know that when you smoke, you harm your friend who sits near you much more than how much you harm yourself?". This time he maynot be so sure as last time. Which is why I shall dwell on an aspect of smoking usually not placed enough emphasis on. Passive smoking.

To put simply, there are two methods in which you can inhale cigarette smoke - active smoking where the smoker inhales 'mainstream smoke', and passive smoking where the people who are near the smoker inhale 'sidestream smoke'. Mainstream smoke, as you can guess is the smoke directly inhaled from the cigarette. This passes through a filter designed to absorb a decent portion of the nicotine, tar and carcinogens that would otherwise be inhaled completely. Sidestream smoke which doesn't pass through this filter, which comes out through the backside of the cigarette is what the smoker's friend inhales.

Let's go to statistics here. More than 80% of the total smoke produced by cigarette is sidestream smoke. See this together with what I mentioned earlier, that the same quantity of sidestream smoke is more harmful than that much mainstream smoke. Meaning, when you sit with a friend for chat, or when a husband sits along with a wife smoking a cigarette the one who is harmed more is the friend and the wife. Wake up, knowing all these facts would you atleast not genuinely try to give up smoking? Smoking is scientific murder!