Secondhand smoke is back and more deadly than ever!
According to a recent study, funded by Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare and Bloomberg Philanthropies, secondhand smoke accounts for more than 600,000 deaths worldwide a year!
That’s right smokers, their not just your lungs you’re risking!
This is the first look at the global impact of secondhand smoking with analyzed data from 2004 for 192 countries, finding that 40% of children and more than 30% of non-smoking men and women regularly breathe in secondhand smoke.
The study estimates that secondhand smoking causes about 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 deaths from lower respiratory disease, 36,900 deaths from asthma and 21,400 deaths from lung cancer a year.
The highest rates of exposure to secondhand smoke were found to be in Europe and Asia, while (thankfully for us) the lowest rates of exposure were in the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa.
Although the deaths only account for 1% of the worldwide death toll, it’s still shocking to hear, especially when 165,000 CHILDREN are dying from exposure.
If this isn’t a wake-up call for some, we don’t want to know what is. Stop smoking, if not for yourself, for your children!
[Image via AP Images.]
