Is second hand smoke more dangerous then actually smoking?
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No, but it is dangerous. It can cause disease like lung cancer.
Not any more dangerous that a good whif of exhaust or campfire smoke or burning trash heaps.
Repeated exposure is the issue, not random encounters.
The body is very resilient and while smoking is not one’s highest choice there are plenty of smokers and ex smokers that have no issues.
It’s all about genetics for the most part, that is why there are no reliable predictions about anything.
So I heard. I wonder about second hand drinking
Oddly enough, I was listening to an old episode of loveline today and someone brought it up. Dr. Drew Sarcastically said… “I see thousands of second hand smoke victims a day.” Then went on to say how ridiculous that claim was.
@Hawkeye What is second hand drinking, although I probably don’t want to know.
My mother is 92 years old and has smoked a pack of cigarettes each day, until now. my dad was also a smoker. they both smoked in the same house. this means they were receiving a double dose of bad smoke. first from the cigarette itself and second from the second hand smoke that lingered in their home. dad died of prostrate cancer. mother is still alive and kicking. how do you explain this?
@john65pennington some people are just naturally genetically coded to be more resilient to the bad effects of smoking. Also, people with high metabolism rates are less likely to get cancer from anything, period.
I heard it was. I don’t smoke around my kid but outside..
A smoker, in a way, is both a first- and a second smoke inhaler, does that mean that i actually have double the chance, then i initially thought, to get diseases?
I doubt it is more dangerous. If you are only around smokers every so iften I would not give it a second thought. The thing about cigerette smoke is it paralyzes the cilia in the lungs. The cilia are hairlike type things that move pollution and other junk out of the lungs. Anyway, smokers are constantly freezing up the cilia and so all the crap they inhale never clears. This explains part of the reason smokers cough in the morning…after being hours without a cig, their lungs begin to wake up. On the other hand, people who do not smoke, even if they are around some smoke every once and a while, their lungs do a good job of clearing stuff out when not exposed.
I do believe as someone said above that bad pollution is similar to second hand smoke. I also believe some people are more predisposed to smoke related lung cancer, and people very at risk might develop cancer with less exposure than the average person.
When someone gets lung cancer they can tell by the cell if it is smoke related or not, and I don’t think I have ever heard strong statistics about lung cancer in second hand smoke people. However, there does seem to be some data on childen growing up in smokers home and them having health related issues.
“Who’s done more research than the good people at the American Tobacco Industry? They say its harmless. Why would they lie? If you’re dead, you can’t smoke.” —-Roy
I coughed in the yard then noticed a man down the street was smoking. That explained it.
Look; when I was growing up the house looked like a fog bank and I’m fine. No cancer in my family.
Why would it be? It seems to make more sense that the one actually smoking the cigarette would be in more danger since most of the smoke is going into their lungs anyway.
No, but it is just as bad. Third hand smoke is just as bad also.
Speaking as a non-smoker for the past 38 years, I don’t like smoke coming at me from any hand.
It’s better than the air in any city or near any road. Cars produce more toxins than a dozen smokers every second and yet you don’t get the same uproar and furor about that. When was the last time you saw large groups protesting cars and successfully passing legislation to restrict/ban internal combustion engines to the extent that smoking has been regulated? And then there is the fact that there are so many other pollutants and toxins in our air and in our food that we aren’t willing to even acknowledge since we have a scapegoat; tobacco.
Bear in mind that American cigarettes generally have a double shitload of added chemicals that you won’t find in other places where cigs are made of (only) tobacco and paper. Given the number of Chinese centenarians who started smoking 2–3 packs a day in their teens, I think t safe to say that there is something more to the smoking issue than rabid anti-smokers will admit.
Second-hand smoke isn’t entirely healthy, but the dangers have been overblown by our paranoid society.
@jerv — They didn’t have big pharma’s lobby behind them. The whole country jumped on that band wagon.
I don’t know, but I will tell you this…
My mother started smoking when she was thirteen. She met my father when she was sixteen and they were together for 46 years. She is a chain-smoker. He never smoked. He died two years ago from a type of cancer commonly associated with cigarettes. She’s still alive and cancer-free.
@cprevite Is that type of cancer exclusive to cigarettes? I work in manufacturing and used to work in Hazmat, so I have been exposed to all sorts of stuff; asbestos, lead, more carcinogens than you ever imagined, the occasional nerve agent. That doesn’t count the smoke from wood stoves and campfires, exhaust fumes, welding fumes (and resulting metal vapors) and other forms of respiratory hazards.
Many people will look at your smoking mom and ignore all other possibilities. Personally, if I get cancer, I will be able to think of too many other causes given the environmental conditions I’ve been subjected to to blame smoking. Anybody who has ever spent time in a city or near/in automobiles would be likewise a little hard-pressed to pin it on one particular cause (thogh not as hard-pressed as me).
@jerv: Nope. I said “commonly associated” – so of course something else could have caused it. But my father worked in an office for twenty years and out of his house for the last fifteen (same company). No obvious exposure to the types of toxins you describe.
I would never lay blame directly at the feet of her smoking, but it’s a hell of a coincidence.
@cprevite Do you know what kind of lung cancer your father had? Here is one link to the different types. The reason I bring it up is that my father also died from lung cancer, and all I know is that it was a ‘non-smoker’ type of cancer. He picked up smoking during WWII and gave it up when studies came out saying that it was hazardous to one’s health.
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