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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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School Project Convinces 20-Year Smoker to Quit [08/08-1]
Excerpts from: Local teen’s project aids in father kicking 20-year
smoking habit
By JEWEL BUSH Houma
(LA) Courier [08/06/03]
The findings from Kayla Callais’ ninth-grade social studies project on
second-hand smoke were so alarming her father, Scott Callais, a 20-year smoker,
quit cold turkey.
Kayla, a 14-year-old Galliano native, who has never puffed a cigarette, has the lungs of a 41-year-old.
Since birth, she has lived around smokers. The damage, in some cases reversible, is largely attributed to her dad’s two-pack a day habit.
The teen has coughed, wheezed and battled reoccurring bouts of bronchitis and ear infections -- linked to passive smoke -- all of her life.
Second-hand smoke, also referred to as environmental tobacco smoke, consists of the smoke inhaled and exhaled by the smoker, called mainstream smoke, and sidestream smoke, the smoke released from the end of a burning cigarette.Two thirds of the smoke from a burning cigarette is not even inhaled by the
smoker, according to studies. That contaminated air is inhaled by anyone in
close distance to the smoker.
Kayla uncovered such information during her Internet probing and from interviews she conducted with six doctors and medical professionals, including various nurses and X-ray technicians.
Scott has been smoke-free for nearly a year, and said he can feel the toll two decades of smoking took on his health.Before he was always tired, yet now that he has quit, Scott said he feels better
than ever.
Two others have stopped smoking cigarettes as a result of Kayla’s project, which earned her first place in the state social studies fair: a 25-year-old mother of two and a 20-year-old man, who lives with two small children.
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