How Does Smoking Affect Others?

Video Transcript

"Hello, I am Dr. David Burns, I'm a professor emeritus at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. Cigarette smoking not only affects the person who smokes but also affects the people around them. The same toxins and toxicants that are present in cigarette smoke are also present in the smoke that curls up off the tip of the cigarette and in the smoke that's exhaled by the smoker. That forms what we call environmental tobacco smoke or involuntary smoke. The damage is quite real. It increases the risk of heart disease, it increases the risk of lung cancer, it also increases the risk of abnormalities in the lung. It's particularly dangerous for young children and children in the first couple of years of life are at increased risk of pneumonia, of cough and respiratory illness if their parents smoke. And it's now clear that if the spouse smokes, if the husband smokes, that the wife is at greater risk of complications of pregnancy. So all of those things combined mean that it is quite dangerous for individuals who don't smoke to be exposed to second hand smoke which is why there are so many rules and so many regulations that protect non-smokers from secondhand smoke exposure."