A study carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO) says that in the year 2004 passive smoking killed over 600,000 people around the world. A quarter of them were children. There are 1.2 billion smokers worldwide. They are not only risking their own lives but the lives of non-smokers as well. Both active and passive smoking kill almost 6 million people a year.
The report says that passive smoking led to almost four hundred thousand deaths from heart diseases , 150,000 from respiratory infections and thousands from asthma and lung cancer .
Children are the group that is hardest hit by passive smoking. But while in Europe only 71 died because of secondhand smoke over 40,000 were killed in Africa. A few months ago a report released in the US showed that more than half of American children between the ages of 3 and 11 had particles in their blood that came from passive smoking.
Most adults who smoke do so at home and in front of their children. Children whose parents smoke also have a higher risk of infections and other diseases like pneumonia and bronchitis .
About a third of all adults and 40% of all children worldwide are exposed to passive smoking on a regular basis . Experts say that banning smoking in public places can help cut health care costs and lower the number of people who die through passive smoking. Studies show that strict anti-smoking laws in bars and restaurants can massively lower exposure to smoke. Such laws can also help people quit smoking.
The report comes to the conclusion that more needs to be done to protect non-smokers at their place of work and on public transport . Right now only 7% of the world’s population lives in areas with strict anti-smoking laws.
--http://www.english-online.at
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