Related topics: children · smoking · cigarette smoke · tobacco smoke · smokers

Testing for secondhand marijuana exposure

With increased legalization of marijuana for medicinal and recreational purposes, interest is growing in the potential health effects of its secondhand smoke. A team now reports in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry the development ...

Study examines marketing deception's role in consumer thinking

Heavily marketed as a safer, healthful alternative to smoking, electronic cigarettes are under fire from California health officials who have declared "vaping" a public health threat, hoping to head off the type of deceptive ...

How dangerous are air pollutants really?

How severely do smog, diesel exhaust and secondhand smoke damage the lungs? What do pollen or nanoparticles trigger when they infiltrate the human body through inhaling? At this year's BIO Convention in Chicago from May 3-6, ...

Passive smoking

Passive smoking is the inhalation of smoke, called secondhand smoke (SHS) or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), from tobacco products used by others. It occurs when tobacco smoke permeates any environment, causing its inhalation by people within that environment. Scientific evidence shows that exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke causes disease, disability, and death.

Passive smoking has played a central role in the debate over the harms and regulation of tobacco products. Since the early 1970s, the tobacco industry has been concerned about passive smoking as a serious threat to its business interests; harm to "innocent bystanders" was perceived as a motivator for stricter regulation of tobacco products. Despite an early awareness of the likely harms of secondhand smoke, the tobacco industry coordinated to engineer a scientific controversy with the aim of forestalling regulation of their products. Currently, the health risks of secondhand smoke are a matter of scientific consensus, and these risks have been one of the major motivations for smoking bans in workplaces and indoor public places, including restaurants, bars and night clubs.

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