Studies Confirm Bodycount From Secondhand Smoke [11/30-1]

Greater Killer Than Auto Accidents, Gun- and Other Crimes, or AIDS

More studies, including recent ones from Australia and Great Britain, provide further confirmation that Americans are more likely to be killed by somebody else's tobacco smoke than by his or her car, gun, or AIDS virus.

According to a report just released by Australia's major medical research body, people who have never smoked but who live with a smoker are 30% more likely to develop lung cancer, and 24% more likely to have a heart attack or die from coronary heart disease.

Two studies just published in the British Medical Journal show why "living with a smoker is a major health hazard" in the words of one researcher.

The first study found that people who have never smoked have an esti- mated 30% greater chance of developing heart disease if they live with a smoker. "This is surprisingly large -- almost half the risk of smoking 20 cigarettes per day even though the exposure is only one percent of that of a smoker," its author noted.

The second British study showed passive smoking raised a nonsmoker's chance of getting lung cancer by 26%. The risk for the nonsmoker rose with the number of cigarettes their partner smoked and the number of years they lived together.

Shortly after the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine published a study showing that 6,200 children die each year in the U.S. because of their parents' smoking, the Centers for Disease Control reported that more than fifteen million children are still being exposed to tobacco smoke in their homes.

The study also found that some 5.4 million other youngsters each year survive ailments such as ear infections and asthma that are triggered by their parents' smoking, and these problems cost $4.6 billion annually to treat.

"With all of this overwhelming and ever-growing evidence that secondhand tobacco smoke is the number 1 killer of innocents, why hasn't the federal government done what California, Utah, Vermont and hundreds of communities did years ago; ban smoking in workplaces and public places including restaurants?" asks John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), a national antismoking organization.

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