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One
Stop, New You, Right Now.
Second-hand
smoke is ‘indisputably’ a killer: report
Article by Carly Weeks
published in The Vancouver Sun on Wednesday, June 28, 2006
OTTAWA – Second-hand smoke is a definite killer and the only
way to protect people is to ban smoking indoors and eliminate smoking
sections because they don’t work, urges a new report from
the United states surgeon general.
Canadians
must see the report as a wakeup call to stop smoking in their homes,
where others, including children, may be breathing in toxic fumes,
said Neil Collishaw, research director at Physicians for a Smoke-Free
Canada, a national health organization.
“There’s
no such thing as safe levels of exposure to second-hand smoke,”
he said. “It should be a great deal of concern to all kinds
of people about the millions of people who continue to be exposed
to second-hand smoke at home.”
There is
“indisputable” scientific evidence that second-hand
smoke kills and is a more pervasive threat than previously thought,
surgeon General Richard H. Carmona said in a statement. Non-smokers
who are exposed to second-hand smoke increase the risk of developing
heart disease by up to 30 per cent and lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent,
the report says.
There is
no safe or risk-free level of exposure to second-hand smoke and
even brief exposure can be harmful, the report concludes.
“The
scientific evidence is now indisputable: second-hand smoke is not
a mere annoyance. It is a serious health hazard that can lead to
disease and premature death in children and non-smoking adults,”
Carmona said in a statement.
The surgeon
general is one of the world’s leading medical authorities
and Canadians need to take his warning about second-hand smoke seriously,
Collishaw said.
“The
implications are very broad,” he said. “I think it’s
time that Canadians recognize that second-hand smoke is a hazard
in all its forms, in all amounts.”
The last
surgeon general’s report to focus on the dangers of second-hand
smoke came in 1986. The new study is a much-needed update because
“involuntary smoking” remains a persistent public health
problem in the U.S. and elsewhere, the report says.
The only
way to protect people from the effects of second-hand smoke is to
eliminate it from indoor spaces completely, the surgeon general
concluded.
“Separating
smokers from non-smokers, cleaning the air, and ventilating buildings
cannot eliminate exposures of non-smokers to second-hand smoke,”
says the report.
In addition
to cancer and heart disease, second-hand smoke also increases the
risk of sudden infant death syndrome among babies.
In Canada,
second-hand smoke is ”killing”” federal prison
guards and the government must ban tobacco from penitentiaries to
protect the lives of workers, Collishaw and the union representing
prison guards urged Tuesday.
While several
provinces have created indoor smoking bans in all work places, the
federal government doesn’t have a similar law, which leaves
thousands of federal workers vulnerable to the damaging effect of
second-hand smoke, Collishaw said.
It’s
a major problem at federal prisons, where inmates often smoke in
their cells and prison guards are forced to breathe in the toxic
fumes, said Sylvain Martel, national president of the Union of Canadian
Correctional Officers.
“They’re
killing us. That’s the bottom line. Is it fair to us? Are
we second-class citizens?” Martel said Tuesday.
“The
bottom line is we have correctional officers that are exposed to
second-hand smoke. That is the problem.”
According
to federal policy, prisoners are not supposed to smoke inside jails,
but without a strong law, it’s difficult for corrections workers
to enforce that policy and stop prisoners from lighting up in their
cells, said Howard page, a correctional officer at Millhaven Institution
in Kingston, Ont.
He’s
been battling the Correctional Service of Canada because he said
he has a right to work in a smoke-free environment.
“We’re
exposed on a daily basis,” he said.
“They’re
well aware of the fact second-hand smoke is still in my work place.”
CanWest News Service
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