If you are a health conscious person, then perhaps you worry about various indoor environmental factors that affect health, such as electromagnetic radiations, mold, VOCs, allergens, etc. that are within the home. It may be that you would consider having an EMF inspection or indoor environmental inspection done before you purchase and move into a home or apartment. But there is another subtle and invisible indoor environmental health hazard that most people do not know about: passive smoking from the house.
Passive smoking refers to a non-smoking person’s exposure to tobacco elements that are released in the air by a nearby smoker (“secondhand smoking”) or by household surfaces, such as carpets, rugs, furniture upholstery, walls, clothes, bed sheets, toys, etc. (“thirdhand smoking”). These surfaces may have absorbed nicotine from an active smoker in the past, and now continually off-gassing it back into the home air. That can be deadly because nicotine reacts with other indoor air pollutants forming carcinogens that may cause cancer.
According to an article by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), even secondhand smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals, including hundreds that are toxic and about 70 that can cause cancer.
Passive smoking can be deadly. Even if one never smoked, he/she can still develop heart disease, lung cancer, or stroke from passive smoking, and even a short time exposure can be harmful to the heart and blood vessels. According to the CDC, 2.5 million non-smoking people died since 1964 due to health problems caused by secondhand smoke exposure.
“There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke; even brief exposure can be harmful to both adults and children … Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can damage the lining of blood vessels and cause blood platelets to become stickier. These changes can cause a deadly heart attack … Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can damage the body’s cells in ways that set the cancer process in motion.”
Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
Here are some additional facts from the CDC. For adults who do not smoke, their exposure to secondhand smoking causes:
- Nearly 34,000 premature deaths from heart disease each year in the United States.
- 25-30% increased risk of developing heart disease.
- 20-30% increased risk of developing stroke.
- More than 8,000 deaths from stroke each year.
Infants and young children, including a fetus in the womb, are particularly vulnerable to passive smoking since their bodies are still developing. More than 1,000 infants die each year as a result of smoking during pregnancy.
If you are a smoker, then not only you are harming yourself but also putting others around you at immediate danger including risk of death. Furthermore, your smoking would be harming people and children, including those you never met or known, for years to come because they moved into the same house that you once occupied while puffing cigarettes. Smoking is something that inevitably harms others no matter where it is done. It is nearly impossible to walk by a city street without inhaling cigarette smoke because people, barred by law from smoking indoors, do so outside the buildings. Hence, I have no other words to describe one’s smoking other than sheer acts of irresponsibility and reckless disregard for the wellbeing of others. Stephen Collete, one of my teachers who taught me indoor environmental inspections said that he does not do inspections for people who smoke. His rationale is that they can’t be serious about making positive changes to improve health while they are still smoking, and he would rather not waste his time with them. I admire his principle, for he is not doing inspections just to make money. He is passionate about what he does in order to improve the health living conditions for others. That is a sentiment that we should all share.
I am a certified Building Biology Environmental Consultant and Electromagnetic Radiation Specialist. The services I offer are listed here: www.yoursafeliving.com > Services