It's Christmas time and you've packed the family into the car and headed to the in-laws. Because of the cold, you keep the windows closed and the heat cranked, only problem is, you're a smoker. After two cigarettes, you will have exposed your spouse and kids to particulates well above the government safety standards.

Many people are aware of the damaging effects of smoking cigarettes, but what many people aren't aware of, are the damaging effects of second-hand smoke. If a person spends more than two hours in a room where someone is smoking, the nonsmoker inhales the equivalent of four cigarettes. Secondhand smoke is the third leading preventable cause of disability and early death (after active smoking and alcohol) in the United States. For every eight smokers who die from smoking, one innocent bystander dies from secondhand smoke.

Second-hand smoke can be described as environmental tobacco smoke that is inhaled involuntarily or passively by someone who is not smoking. Second hand smoke is a mixture of two forms of smoke that come from burning tobacco: sidestream smoke (smoke from the end of a lighted cigarette, pipe, or cigar) and mainstream smoke (smoke exhaled by a smoker). When non-smokers are exposed to secondhand smoke it is called involuntary smoking or passive smoking. Non-smokers who breathe in secondhand smoke take in nicotine and other toxic chemicals just like smokers do. The more secondhand smoke you are exposed to, the higher the level of these harmful chemicals in your body.

Thousands and thousands of people oversee the dangers and health complications that can be involved with secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke can still cause cancer and other problems including coughing, mucus, chest discomfort, and reduced lung function, but the biggest group of people effected are unborn babies to children younger than 18 months. Secondhand smoke causes about 150,000 to 300,000 lung infections such as pneumonia and bronchitis in children, which results in 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations nationally. Second hand smoke can also increase the number and severity of asthma attacks in children with asthma and is responsible for more then 750,000 ear infections in children. Pregnant women exposed to second hand smoke can also have an increased risk of having low birth weight babies.

The hazardous effects of smoking not only effect the smoker, but everyone around them. Twenty five states, like Minnesota, California, and New York, have taken action about this definate conflict and have proposed statewide smoking bans in restaurants, bars, and non-hospitality workplaces. Wisconsin's smoking ban begins July 5, 2010.

So if you are a smoker, make a conscious effort to save those around you. Please don't pollute the air.

http://www1.umn.edu/perio/tobacco/secondhandsmoke.html

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ped/content/ped_10_2x_secondhand_smoke-clean_indoor_air.asp