Secondhand smoke
Carola Felchner is a freelance writer in the medical department and a certified training and nutrition advisor. She worked for various specialist magazines and online portals before becoming a freelance journalist in 2015. Before starting her internship, she studied translation and interpreting in Kempten and Munich.
More about the experts All content is checked by medical journalists.Those who actively light a cigarette are not only harming themselves. Because through passive smoking, i.e. inhaling tobacco smoke that wafts through the air, non-smokers also involuntarily inhale the pollutants of the burning tobacco. Read here how harmful passive smoking is, what consequences it can have and whether you also smoke passively with e-cigarettes.
What is passive smoking?
If someone involuntarily inhales tobacco smoke from the ambient air, this is called passive smoking. The fact that there is cigarette smoke in the air and that not everything "disappears" in the lungs of the active smoker is due to the fact that a much larger part of the smoke is produced, or up to 85 percent, while nobody draws on the cigarette, but them just glows. This smoke is called "sidestream smoke". In addition, there is the smoke that the smoker exhales into the ambient air.
The German Society for Pneumology and Respiratory Medicine (DGP) assumes that people who are in a smoky room inhale as many pollutants per hour as if they had smoked a cigarette themselves.
The toxins in the smoke-filled ambient air are the same as when you inhale, including cadmium, ammonia or the carcinogenic substances benzene and vinyl chloride. Often these pollutants are even more concentrated in secondary smoke than in so-called mainstream smoke - or they react with air particles and form new toxic compounds.
Passive smoking: these are the consequences
Non-smokers often feel the first signs of how harmful passive smoking is after just a few minutes in a smoke-filled room: the eyes sting and the airways itchy.
In the longer term, secondhand smoke increases the risk for
- Lung cancer
- Cancer of the nasal cavity
- Cancer of the sinuses
- Breast cancer
- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
The cardiovascular system also suffers. Diseases like:
- Heart attack,
- Strokes and
- coronary artery disease
Because passive smoking weakens the immune system, infections and respiratory diseases have an easier time. According to figures from the European Lung Foundation and the European Respiratory Society, more than 600,000 non-smokers worldwide die each year as a result of passive smoking.
Passive smoking: children and pregnant women are particularly at risk
Cigarette smoke is dangerous even for the unborn child. Passive smoking during pregnancy increases the risk for the mother
- Premature birth
- low birth weight
- Developmental disorders
- Pulmonary dysfunction and narrowed airways
- sudden infant death syndrome
Since children have a higher breathing rate than adults and their own detoxification mechanisms are not yet working as efficiently, secondhand smoke has a number of negative effects on their health. Children who have to "smoke" have more often
- Otitis media
- bronchitis
- Asthma and other respiratory diseases
There is also increasing evidence that children under five who grow up in a smoky environment are more likely to develop leukemia (blood cancer) or a malignant tumor of the lymphatic system (lymphoma).
E-cigarette: Passive smoking also possible here?
There are hardly any (meaningful) studies with regard to passive smoking with e-cigarettes. A study carried out by the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich on behalf of the Bavarian State Office for Health and Food Safety provided evidence of this. In a room where e-cigarettes were vaped for two hours, the researchers found carcinogenic and allergy-causing particles in the air, e.g. the fog fluid propylene glycol, which can irritate the eyes and respiratory tract.
If pollutant particles penetrate deeper into the lungs, they can impair their function or cause inflammation. In people with asthma who involuntarily vape with e-cigarettes, the toxins can trigger attacks and make the symptoms worse.
How can passive smoking be avoided?
The most effective measure against passive smoking is a consistent smoking ban - especially in closed rooms: be it in restaurants, trains, the car or in your own home.
On the other hand, it is ineffective to smoke with the window open, because something of the smoke always pulls into the room and gets stuck in the curtains and carpets. The same applies to ventilation after smoking. In order to be guaranteed not to be forced to secondhand smoke, the only option for non-smokers is to stay away from smokers or places where people smoke.
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