If I were to walk up to you with a can filled with 4,000 chemicals and say, ‘Excuse me, do you mind if I spray this in your face,’ you’d think I was out of my mind. That’s what you get when you are exposed to secondhand smoke.

When people smoke, they not only cause damage to their health but also damage the health of people around them. It is estimated that 15% of cigarette smoke gets inhaled by the smoker. The remaining 85%, made up of 43 cancer-causing agents and 200 poisons, lingers in the air for everyone to breathe. This lingering smoke that a person inhales involuntarily is called Secondhand Smoke (also referred to as Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) or Passive Smoke). Non-smokers that are exposed to secondhand smoke are called passive smokers or involuntary smokers.

Whether one is young or old, healthy or sick, secondhand smoke is dangerous to one’s health. If a person doesn’t smoke, but is around people who smoke, that person is at a higher risk of developing certain diseases. Non-smokers who breathe in secondhand smoke take in nicotine and other toxic chemicals just like smokers do. The more secondhand smoke one is exposed to, the higher the level of these harmful chemicals in the body.

Source: www.cancer.org