Is it true that passive smoking is more harmful than active?

It is believed that inhalation of tobacco smoke more adversely affects health than smoking itself. We decided to check if this is actually from a scientific point of view.

Information about more harm to passive smoking can be found in a wide variety of sources - on sites institutions healthcare and organs authorities, V Media, on forums about motherhood And on entertainment Portals. Explain This, for example, is: “When smoking, smoke enters the body partially filtered, and this happens portioned. A passive smoker constantly and in full inhalation inhales the harmful substances contained in tobacco smoke. ” 

Active (primary) smoking called The process of inhalation of the smoke of burning plant material. Passive (secondary) smoking is the process of inhalation of tobacco smoke along with air people who are near a smoking person, but do not smoke themselves.

WITH Recent por scientists Also Select Tertiary smoking is a frequent and long stay of non -smokers in a ventilated room, in which no one is smoking now, but before they smoked a lot. This also includes the practice of using things that have been in a smoked room for a long time. Tertiary smoking occurs when solid smoke particles settle on clothes, skin and hair and are transferred to rooms where they have never been smoked. For example, traces of tertiary smoking discovered In intensive care rooms for newborns, which, of course, have never smoked themselves and no one had previously smoked in this room. However, after visiting the babies, solid smoke particles were found on the surface of the incubators and other furniture with smoking relatives, and Kotinin was present in the urine of the newborn - one of the metabolites of nicotine. 

By definition American cancer, a burning cigarette produces two types of smoke: main and lateral. The main smoke is the one that the smoking person himself inhales, that is, the stream that goes through the filter into the lungs. Side smoke occurs at the opposite end of the cigarette - from its burning part. The content of nicotine and various carcinogens in lateral smoke two to six times higherthan mainly. Moreover, the content of these substances in the smoke that “hung” in the air for 30 minutes, higherthan in freshly worked out. Scientists from San Francisco exposed rats by fresh and “insisting” smoke and found out that “that infused” two to four times more toxic for fabrics of the respiratory tract of rats than fresh. In the same work, scientists noted that fresh lateral smoke, in turn, turned out to be three to four times more toxic for laboratory animals than the main that inhales the smoker. 

By transferring experimental data to reality, you can formulate it like this: to be in the room where someone smoked 30 minutes before, even more dangerous than standing next to a smoking person, while the lateral smoke itself contains more harmful substances than the main one. From this, it would seem, it can immediately conclude that passive smoking is precisely more dangerous than active. However, there are a number of factors not taken into account earlier. Basic smoke smoker Inhaling Not constantly, but only at the time of tightening, so the consumption of the main smoke by each individual will depend on smoking behavior. At the same time, the smoker is in the same way not protected from more toxic lateral smoke, which enters the air from the smoldering end of the cigarette. 

If we compare the risks of the underlying diseases that occur due to tobacco smoke, the following picture will be obtained.

• Cardiovascular diseases: the risk of active smokers against non-smokers (that is, those who do not smoke either actively or passively on an ongoing basis) higher two to four times, the risk of passive smokers against non-smokers higher by 25-30%.
• Stroke: the risk of active smokers against non -smokers higher, By different given two or six times, the risk of passive smokers against non-smokers higher by 25-30%.
• Lung cancer: the risk of active smokers against non -smokers higher 15-30 times, the risk of passive smokers against non -smokers higher 20-30%.
• Memory problems: experiment He demonstrated that smokers in memorization tests show the result 30% worse compared to non -smokers, while passive smokers suffer a little less - their results are 20% worse than that of non -smokers.

It turns out that, although the lateral smoke itself, which is inhaled by passive smokers, contains a greater concentration of harmful substances than the main smoke that goes through the filter of cigarettes into the lungs, the harm caused to various organs and functions is still smaller. Nevertheless, passive smoking is extremely dangerous, and it is worth avoiding it with all its might.

Image on the cover: Maxpixel

Not true

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