When you smoke a cigarette or smoking with pipe or hookah, only a small part of smoke goes into your lungs and the most part goes into the air around you where anyone nearby –your loved ones, your children- can breathe it in. we call it second-hand smoking or passive smoking and it is not only unpleasant for them but also is as dangerous for them as being a smoker themselves.
Scientific studies confirmed that breathing in second-hand smoke regularly could result in the same diseases as being a smoker; diseases like lung cancer and heart diseases. It is especially more dangerous for pregnant women and children as it is strongly tied with premature birth, low birth weight and cot death in infants, and asthma, allergies and other breathing problems in children.
Second-hand smoke is a deadly cocktail of more than 4000 toxic substances that could cause cancer. You may think that you are careful with the smoke but as most of it is invisible, people around you still breathe in the poisonous substances. Smoke can stay in the air for 2 or 3 hours and even opening windows and doors or smoking in another room of the hours, does not protect others.
The only way to protect your loved ones from second-hand smoke is to keep the environment around them smoke-free, and the best way for doing that is to quit smoking. But is you are not ready to quit yet, you should always smoke outside and ask other smokers to do so. Also, remember that smoking in the car is the same as smoking inside the house and as it is a smaller place, it is more dangerous for the other people who are in the car; so never smoke in the cars too.
If you are based in Tehran and you want to quit smoking, you can contact IATA’s smoking cessation clinic and our colleagues will be ready to help.
