TRUE FACTS ABOUT SMOKING DISEASES
• Breast feeding. Research has shown that smoking cigarettes may contribute to inadequate breast-milk production. Nicotine has also been found in the breast milk of mothers who smoke, although the effect on the baby is not yet fully understood.
• Long-term growth. Studies of long-term growth and development give evidence that children of mothers who smoked in pregnancy may have slight but measurable deficiencies in physical growth and intellectual development up to 11 years of age. Infants of parents who smoke are also more susceptible to chest infections, bronchitis and pneumonia than are the children of non-smokers.
The act of breathing in other people’s smoke has been labelled ‘passive’, ‘involuntary’ or ’second-hand’ smoking. Many non-smokers experience nose, throat and eye irritation from passive smoking; and there is evidence that long-term exposure may be harmful even to normal, healthy adults. Non-smokers dislike the smell of tobacco smoke in their clothes and hair following exposure.
The smoke from the burning end and from the mouthpiece of the cigarette is more irritant than the smoke which is breathed out. Since pipe and cigar smokers tend to inhale less than cigarette smokers, the contribution of their smoke to atmospheric pollution may be greater than that of cigarette smokers.
• Non-smokers who report recent exposure to smoke have been found to have nicotine concentrations in their saliva and urine which overlapped those of smokers who had smoked up to three cigarettes before sampling.
• Carbon monoxide (CO) levels in air heavily contaminated by tobacco smoke can exceed those permitted in industry for an eight-hour exposure. The amount absorbed by the non-smoker increases with the period of exposure.
• Recent research found that non-smokers who worked for twenty years with smokers, but who were not exposed to cigarette smoke at home, had sustained measurable lung damage similar to that in smokers who did not inhale.
A Japanese study has shown that the non-smoking wives of cigarette smokers developed lung cancer at higher rates than non-smoking wives of non-smoking husbands. The study followed up 91,540 non-smoking wives for fourteen years. The lung-cancer mortality rate of those married to men who smoked twenty or more cigarettes a day was twice as high as that of women who were married to non-smokers.
Young children can be harmed by passive smoking. Infants under a year in age run twice the risk of developing a serious chest illness if both parents smoke. Also, children of parents who smoke have more upper respiratory infections than do children of non-smokers.
Since the early 1970s the proportion of adult cigarette smokers (over 16) in Great Britain has been decreasing. Between 1972 and 1982 the proportion of adult male smokers fell by over a quarter and that of women by about one fifth. Smokers have been a minority in the adult population since 1976. It has been estimated that there are about 16-17 million adult smokers in the population of Great Britain, and nearly 10 million ex-smokers. Between 1980 and 1982 about one million people gave up smoking.
Since 1978 men have been smoking on average fewer cigarettes per week, although they smoke slightly more now than in 1972.
• Cigarette sales in the UK have been declining steadily since 1974.
• There is a link between cigarette smoking and socio-economic group, showing a continuing trend for more smokers (men and women) in manual than in non-manual groups but in 1982 smokers were, for the first time, a minority in every socio-economic group.
• In England and Wales alone about 95,000 people are killed by smoking each year. It has been estimated that out of 1,000 young men who smoke in the UK, 1 will be murdered, 6 will die in road accidents and 250 will die prematurely as a result of their smoking. Most die from one of the three main diseases associated with cigarette smoking: lung cancer; chronic bronchitis/emphysema; and coronary heart disease. Lung cancer is caused almost entirely by smoking. In 1981 about a third of the total deaths from lung cancer were in people aged under 65. Although deaths from this disease are declining among men, they are rising among women.
• More than two-thirds of all smokers want to give up.
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