Can the Smoking of Others Hurt You?

Millions of persons suffer serious, and often fatal, harm because someone else smoked. For example, if a mother smokes, her unborn baby is often damaged. In fact, it may be killed even before it can be born.

“How can that be?” you may ask. “How can the smoke hurt the child in the protected environment inside its mother?”

HOW THE UNBORN ARE HURT

Almost immediately after inhaling, nicotine from the smoke enters the smoking mother’s bloodstream. This powerful drug constricts the blood vessels and arteries in her uterus, thus depriving the baby of oxygen and nutrients. At the same time, carbon monoxide easily passes through the placenta to the baby. It replaces some of the vital oxygen in the baby’s blood that is needed for normal growth and development.

Of interest in this regard is a study made by English doctors at Oxford University. They said that when its mother smokes, the baby can “be seen to gasp in the womb, . . . almost certainly suffering a temporary oxygen shortage.”

The sad results are well documented. “Smoking during pregnancy can cause congenital malformations so severe that either the fetus dies, or the infant does shortly after birth,” Family Health magazine observes. Babies born of smoking mothers face a third higher risk of dying soon after birth. And they are twice as likely to be smaller than normal at birth.

In addition, the likelihood of “crib death” (sudden infant death syndrome) is increased when mothers smoke​—by 52 percent researchers say. Apparently babies born to mothers who smoke have subtle abnormalities in their brain stem, and this may interfere with breathing and lead to sudden death.

If smoking by its mother can hurt an unborn baby, how is a child affected by the smoke after it is born?

EFFECT ON YOUNG CHILDREN

Actually, parents who smoke are indirectly forcing their children to smoke. “The effect on young children of parental smoking is estimated at about the same as if the child smoked three to five cigarettes a day,” explained lung specialist Dr. Alfred Munzer. And for the sensitive lungs of a young child, that is a lot of poison! Surely, as a parent, you would be very unhappy to learn that someone was making your child smoke five cigarettes a day!

But are children really hurt by the smoke of smoking parents? The Journal of the American Medical Association summarized the medical research on this question, saying:

“Infants whose mothers smoke are more likely to be admitted to hospitals with bronchitis or pneumonia than are infants whose mothers do not smoke. Another study showed that the chances of pneumonia or bronchitis developing in an infant are almost doubled if both parents smoke. . . . Other studies showed that the frequency of respiratory symptoms in children is directly proportional to the amount of tobacco smoke in the child’s environment. Also, children exposed to tobacco smoke have increases in heart rate and blood pressure that are similar to those changes that occur in smokers.”

A smoker may, for the pleasure he feels he derives from smoking, choose to damage his own health. But do you consider it morally right that he also damages the health of his children?

EFFECT ON ADULTS

What if you are a nonsmoking adult? Are you harmed by the smoke of others?

When you sit near a person who is smoking, the effect can be almost the same as though you were smoking. “Studies have shown,” noted Today’s Health, “that since the average smoker actively smokes his cigarette for only a small portion of the time it is lit, a nonsmoker may actually be forced against his will to breathe almost as much carbon monoxide, tar and nicotine as the active smoker sitting next to him.”

Dr. John L. Pool commented regarding the effect of only a slight increase of carbon monoxide in the air. He said that when carbon monoxide levels are “above eight parts per million (clean air has one to four), there is a definite decrease in oxygen reaching heart and lungs.” How much carbon monoxide may there be in the air of a smoke-filled room?

Philip Abelson, as editor of Science, wrote in an editorial of that magazine: “In a poorly ventilated, smoke-filled room, concentrations of carbon monoxide can easily reach several hundred parts per million, thus exposing smokers and nonsmokers present to a toxic hazard.” Such levels of carbon monoxide are far above the legal limits permitted.

Yet can this smoke really harm you? Indeed it can! Perhaps breathing the smoke makes you feel sick. Smokers should not be surprised by this, since, when smoking for the first time, many of them became sick, even vomiting.

The fact is, for persons with heart disease, breathing the air in a smoke-filled room can be dangerous. “It is a definite health hazard.” That was the conclusion reached from a federal study directed by Dr. Wilbert S. Aronow in California.

A more recent study of 2,100 middle-aged men and women reveals that even healthy adults are harmed when they are forced regularly to breathe the smoke of others. These nonsmokers were found to suffer the same kind of damage to small airways deep inside the lungs as do smokers. “This is permanent damage occurring in people who have chosen not to smoke,” explained physiologist James R. White.

Further emphasizing the danger of being forced to breathe tobacco smoke is a study in Erie County, Pennsylvania. According to the New York Times, this study “revealed that the nonsmoking wives of men who smoke die on the average four years younger than women whose husbands are also nonsmokers.”

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SHOWS

The evidence is conclusive: If you are a nonsmoker who must breathe the smoke of others, it can hurt you. As time goes on, this is becoming a generally recognized fact. Thus most states in the United States and hundreds of cities have some kind of ban on smoking in public facilities. Also, some companies restrict smoking to designated areas. And due to losses in productivity from smoking, a number of employers have offered employees bonuses of hundreds of dollars if they will quit.

Many lawsuits have been filed by nonsmokers in an effort to seek relief from the pollution caused by smokers. In one case, the judge noted that smoking had been banned in a certain company’s computer room because the equipment malfunctioned when exposed to cigarette smoke. So he ruled that, if smoking could be curtailed for a machine, it could be also for the sake of humans.

Humans who smoke not only foul the air that others must breathe but also damage their own health. They themselves would be healthier if they stopped smoking. And they would also save a lot of money by not polluting​—up to $700 a year or so just for the cost of the cigarettes. So the only reasonable course for a smoker is to stop smoking.

Consider the amount of pollution in the smoke that curls off the burning end of a cigarette. It is much more toxic than the smoke inhaled by the smoker. Sidestream smoke contains twice the amount of tar and nicotine, five times more carbon monoxide and 50 times more ammonia than mainstream smoke, not to mention other poisons.

The burning of 10 cigarettes in a closed automobile will raise the carbon monoxide level to 100 parts per million, far above the exposure permitted by United States federal air-quality standards. “At a typical campus party,” noted the New York Times, “the level of particulates in the air from cigarette smoke is 40 times above the United States air quality standard.” And, as observed above, the harm done to those regularly forced to breathe such smoke has been well established.

CONSISTENT WITH NEIGHBOR LOVE?

The Bible says that to “love your neighbor as yourself” is “the kingly law,” thus emphasizing this law’s importance. (Jas. 2:8) Would it be showing love to your neighbor willfully to throw garbage onto his property or to spit in his face? “Of course not!” you may say. Would doing these things to your neighbor be a sin?

The definition of sin helps to answer this question. “Sin is a breaking of the law”​—God’s law—​the Bible says. (1 John 3:4, Today’s English Version) So willfully to impose on your neighbor something as objectionable as spit in his face or garbage on his property would be a sin. It would be a violation of “the kingly law” that says, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”

But how does this relate to smoking? Dr. Isaac Asimov, in an editorial in Cancer News, very forcefully showed how. “When someone smokes in my presence,” he said, “his vice is not private. His foul emanations find their way into my lungs and bloodstream. His stench becomes my stench and clings to me. And, he raises my chance of heart disease and lung cancer.”

In answer to smokers who may claim the freedom to smoke in the presence of others, Dr. Asimov said: “If he feels he must smoke and that by objecting I am depriving him of his freedom, then would he be willing to bear with me if I feel I must kick him in the groin and that by objecting he would deprive me of my freedom? Let’s put it this way: Your freedom to smoke ends where my lungs begin.”

No question about it, kicking someone in the groin, spitting in his face, or throwing garbage on his property is not consistent with neighbor love. Neither is smoking. It is infringing on the rights of others​—hurting them rather than loving them. Yes, smoking is a sin.