If you're not a smoker, stay away from those who do because smokers aren't the only ones being harmed by their habit.

According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), lung cancer is the worst cancer killer in America, taking more lives each year than breast, prostate and colorectal cancers combined. ACS statistics show that an estimated 160,440 Americans die each year from lung cancer, accounting for 28 percent of all cancer deaths. Over 173,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed each year, accounting for 13 percent of new cancer cases.

When people get lung cancer, people say, 'Did you smoke?' Well, the problem is about 10 percent of men and over 20 percent of women with lung cancer never lit a cigar. Why among that group, women are two to three times more likely than men to get the disease, doctors don't know yet. Hormones, diet, air pollution and especially second-hand smoke, all are believed to be important factors.

Secondhand smoke (SHS) - also referred to as involuntary smoking, environmental tobacco smoke, or passive smoking - is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. Tobacco smoke lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished and it is involuntarily inhaled by nonsmokers.

Secondhand smoke is a known cause of lung cancer, heart disease, chronic lung ailments such as bronchitis and asthma (particularly in children), and low birth-weight births. Even a half hour of secondhand smoke exposure causes heart damage similar to that of habitual smokers. Nonsmokers' heart arteries showed a reduced ability to dilate, diminishing the ability of the heart to get life-giving blood.

In addition, the same half hour of secondhand smoke exposure activates blood platelets, which can initiate the process of atherosclerosis (blockage of the heart's arteries) that leads to heart attacks. These effects explain other research showing that nonsmokers regularly exposed to SHS suffer death or morbidity rates 30% higher than those of unexposed nonsmokers.

Valerian D is a freelance writer specialized in health issues.

http://www.mens-health-events.info/smoke.php