Passive smoking kills 1% of world population

Now that the January 2 sounds like the most likely date for Spain debuts new smoking ban and the background noise against the hotel owners, the numbers of cigarettes hit harder than ever: 600,000 people die each year around the world who are victims of passive smoking. Women and children are most affected, as denounced by the World Health Organization in the largest study conducted to date Passive smoking kills people..

One of every 100 deaths worldwide is related to high exposure to cigarettes of others, WHO warns in a paper now published in the journal 'The Lancet'. In total, 600,000 people of which 47% are male, followed by children, who represent 28% of victims and women (26%). By province, Eastern Europe, Western Pacific and Southeast Asia are the areas with the greatest number of passive smokers.

Passive smoking

For this bleak scenario (which must be added the other 5.1 million deaths caused by smoking first hand), a team led by Annette Prüss-Üstün and Spanish Armando Peruga reviewed data from passive smoking in 192 countries around the world (including Spain) in 2004, the latest for which statistics are available.
'No' smoking at home Passive smoking kills people.

The problem, say the authors, is that home is the main venue for secondhand smoke exposure, which in the case of children also "have the ability to avoid pollution sources, which are usually close relatives ". No less than 88% of smoking parents do at home, and 80% by their children, reported in a commentary in the same publication and Jonathan Samet Heather Wipfli, Institute for Global Health of California (Los Angeles, USA) Passive smoking kills people..

"We are not supporters of the law to regulate smoking at home, but should strengthen public health campaigns to ban it in public spaces," explains Armando Peruga, coordinator of Smoke Free Initiative WHO. He adds, "is now shown that encourages smokers to give up their habit in bars or at work, this will also be transferred home. About 60% -70% want to quit smoking and banning it in places also affects public not to smoke at home Passive smoking kills people.. "

Passive smoking kills people

In the case of children, smoking 'second hand' has lower mortality rate than women, in exchange robbed many years of quality of life. And as Dr. Peruga added, when added to the childhood respiratory infection is a deadly cocktail in Africa or Southeast Asia Passive smoking kills people.
In fact, passive smoking kills 165,000 children a respiratory tract infection each year, nearly 37,000 adults with asthma and other 380,000 for coronary heart disease (ischemic disease).