World Health Organization: Second-Hand Smoke Kills 600,000 A Year

[Hissyspit]

Source: Reuters

Second-hand smoke kills 600,000 a year: WHO study

By Kate Kelland
LONDON | Thu Nov 25, 2010 7:52pm EST
(Reuters) - Around one in a hundred deaths worldwide is due to passive smoking, which kills an estimated 600,000 people a year, World Health Organization (WHO) researchers said on Friday.

In the first study to assess the global impact of second-hand smoke, WHO experts found that children are more heavily exposed to second-hand smoke than any other age-group, and around 165,000 of them a year die because of it. "Two-thirds of these deaths occur in Africa and south Asia," the researchers, led by Annette Pruss-Ustun of the WHO in Geneva, wrote in their study.

Children's exposure to second-hand smoke is most likely to happen at home, and the double blow of infectious diseases and tobacco "seems to be a deadly combination for children in these regions," they said.

- snip -

The WHO researchers looked at data from 192 countries for their study. To get comprehensive data from all 192, they had to go back to 2004. They used mathematical modeling to estimate deaths and the number of years lost of life in good health. Worldwide, 40 percent of children, 33 percent of non-smoking men and 35 percent non-smoking women were exposed to second-hand smoke in 2004, they found.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AP00D20101126

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http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AP01L20101126

Reuters Factbox: Tobacco - One of the world's biggest health threats

Thu Nov 25, 2010 7:52pm EST
(Reuters) - Passive smoking kills an estimated 600,000 people a year worldwide, which means it accounts for around one percent of all deaths, World Health Organization researchers said in a study on Friday.

Here are some facts about tobacco's impact on health:

TOBACCO

* Tobacco kills up to half of its users. The World Health Organization describes tobacco use as "one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced."
* The annual death toll linked to tobacco is more than five million, and could rise to more than eight million by 2030 unless action is taken to control the tobacco epidemic.
* More than 80 percent of the world's one billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries.
* Total consumption of tobacco products is increasing globally, although it is decreasing in some wealthier nations.
* There are more than 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, of which at least 250 are known to be harmful and more than 50 are known to cause cancer.

[Zoeisright]

1. K&R

For the most preventable cause of death. Tobacco companies rank right up there with Cheney and Stalin as murderers.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Zoeisright]

11. Big tobacco = big money for campaigns.

Besides, repukes always support business against any regulation. Especially when those businesses kill people. Fewer of the peasants to suppress that way, you know.

[virgogal]

2. Wasn't this point made about 20 years ago? What are they wasting

more money and resources on this for?

Ban tobacco products and be finished with it.

[DeadEyeDyck]

4. Do you really think that is possible?

Cigarette prohibition??

[rasputin1952]

6. That doesn't ever work...

think back to prohibition, and currently w/drugs...banning things is not the way to do things. It's never worked in the past, it won't work now. The only way to stop this is long term education.

Alcohol kills far more innocent people than anything else on the planet...and yet people continue to drink and drive, drink themselves into oblivion and then take an innocent life and a whole bunch of other things.

Add to this how many people are killed each year from tainted food or water and 600,000 becomes relatively minuscule.

More than that die from violence around the world, coups internal wars and civil wars. Sadly, people have a difficult time learning about dangers that crop up all over the place.

[Bette Noir]

8. Is tobacco still subsidized?

I'd just as soon my taxes not be used for growing carcinogens.

[rasputin1952]

12. Virtually everything is subsidized to some extent...

There are a host of things I don't want my tax money to go to, war, nuclear weapons, paying for congressional health care while people are dying in the streets from hunger.

I can't just "opt out" though, any time taxes get cut, the suffering comes first and foremost to the poor and destitute. The best I can do is try to get the best people I can into seats of power and hope they will do the right thing...sadly, it is exceptionally rare to find good congresscritters, and then, when we get them, people without a clue elect others that will be against their best interests...like the Teabagger "Revolution".

I'm more worried about getting food and water I can trust than second hand smoke, and when one adds into the equation that what we are breathing is a toxic mix anyway, I'm surprised that people would vote for those that would roll back the EPA and gut the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts. It is easy enough to move away from second hand smoke, one cannot go without clean water and safe food. Sitting in traffic can add more carcinogens than sitting by a smoker, who has generally been relegated to smoking outside, except while home.

there are no easy answers, sadly, people have not quit smoking, but that's beside the point really, if we don't take care of some very real problems in food and water, we'll die a lot faster than 30 years of second hand smoke.

[BlueIris]

3. Smoking kills. Smokers and others. nt

[hayu_lol]

7. Except for those who die young,

old age kills all of us.

You guys gonna ban old age?

I'm 75, a smoker for years, have buried many of my non-smoking friends. Wonder what they did wrong?

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Well, perhaps they were some of the 600,000 per year ... (nt)

[Winterblues]

18. Perhaps some of them breathed your secondhand smoke.

:shrug:

[Gregorian]

9. As long as cannibis is illegal we don't live in a democracy.

I haven't thought that statement out thoroughly. Perhaps it is flawed logic. But I am convinced that this is all about preservation of corporations rather than the will of the people.

And the same for health care.

[nyy1998]

10. I know it scares the bleep out of me whenever I have to go through 2nd hand smoke

I don't smoke, chew tobacco, do hookah, or any drugs and my lungs still aren't that strong, so I get still get really nervous around smokers.

[denem]

14. Wonky study. 1 bill smoke, 5.1 mlll smokers die of it per year ??

and 12% (600.000) more die from passive smoking. There's something wrong with the methodology here.

To summarize, there are 6 deaths from passive smoking a year per 10,000 smokers, and active smokers are only 8 times more likely to die of smoking.

Or put in another way, 6 deaths per 10.000 cars. Yep, you've got as much chance of dying in a traffic accident.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. 'Wonky'? If passive smoking kills as many as traffic accidents, then it's very dangerous

In many countries, the top killer of some age groups is traffic accidents. At least traffic accidents are a side effect of something useful - while passive smoking is just the final insult from a smelly habit of other people.

[denem]

21. Wonky! 1 in 200 smokers die of it each year?

How does that add up to half of smokers die from smoking?

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. "Could rise to 8 million by 2030"

Smoking takes time to kill. If there are a billion smokers now, and it's expected to be killing 8 million by 2030, that's 0.8% of the current total; over 50 years of smoking, that's 40% of smokers. So the numbers (which are "up to half of its users", "more than eight million") roughly add up.

Plus those numbers you're complaining about aren't from the study, as far as I can see; they are Reuters' 'factbox'.

[denem]

26. Wonky + Wonky

From the main article "5.1 million deaths a year attributable to active tobacco use, the researchers said."

2. The chance of dying over life from any disease is a geometric progression, not an arithmetic addition.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. It's not a geometric progression either - because it kills more people later in life

And that's the point. There are now 1 billion smokers, and now 5.1 million deaths attributed to it. But the worldwide incidence of smoking has increased up until now; those 5.1 million deaths come largely from significantly less than 1 billion long term smokers. And when today's smokers make it to their fifties and sixties, and start dropping dead from lung cancer and heart disease, the deaths due to smoking will increase.

If the population of smokers holds steady at around 1 billion, it will be killing around 8 million a year. The chances of dying from it in any one year are small, but each individual will go through the increasing likelihood of it killing him, and the addition of the yearly risks gives roughly the right figure.

[The Straight Story]

16. Will they never stand up to the carmakers and save our lungs? Kills more than 2nd hand smoke

Will they never stand up to the carmakers and save our lungs?

Air pollution kills many times more people than passive smoking, but Britain has failed even to meet feeble EU standards

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/nov/01/comment.columnists

But hey, we don't really want to be progressive and save lives, we just want to say we are so we can more and more remove choice.

Abortion kills far more than smoking does according to those on the right, so if you want them to adopt the same values I am betting they will do the same thing when it comes to removing choices.

This report will be used by many to promote their desire to control the lives of others. I just hope the people using it as such realize that when they come for your car, ability to have an abortion, etc I will be sitting back saying 'you reap what you sow'.

[askeptic]

17. Correlation is not Causation.

Pretty shaky research, IMO.

[ProudDad]

19. Are you saying that 2nd hand smoke doesn't cause deaths?

Or just questioning the research methodology?

[askeptic]

24. questioning the direct causal linkage they claim.

They are claiming the correlation with death rates in 3rd world area, with high rates of illness and opportunistic disease, poor nutrition, etc. And they can't (and in-fact don't) claim a causal relationship, though it is correlative. The headline is misleading and not actually supported by the research.

[ProudDad]

25. Pretty typical of headline writers, right?

Although the FACT that cigarettes aren't really a good idea is a pretty logical conclusion though... :)

[bvar22]

20. Smoking kills 10,000 times as many people as...

.."Terrorists" sneaking on to a plane at your airport.

[InkAddict]

23. Que sera, sera...

I'm gonna call that a reduction-in-force of the global community. As long as it's a legal activity, well..can you say do-gooders et al will pay the freight for others' bad judgments...what the heck else is new under the sun....

Hey, elites...better slather on that sunscreen that prevents you from losing your grip and stop worrying about the small stuff. Just like the poor and those you'd have become poor...

LIVING KILLS 100% OF THOSE ALIVE...DEAL WITH IT!

[L.Torsalo]

28. Alarm!!!

"They used mathematical modeling to estimate deaths and the number of years lost of life in good health." Just like they used in the financial sector to plot the effects of their "new investment instruments"...that worked really well. So when data is missing, you just plug in a favorable value, and voila! Science is being used by insurance companies to deny coverage. Second-hand smoke deaths are actually very low based on initial studies conducted during the Clinton years. The original findings were statistically negligible, so they puffed up the numbers. I suspect filter cigarettes are the cause of lung diseases and cancers. Sub-micron fibers get caught in lung tissue and cause the same damage as happens when asbestos enters the bronchi.Remember that the US gov. required the introduction of filters. Now what?
I grew up around serious smokers, trapped in houses with adults puffing away, no windows open because it's cold up north. I have had to sit in smoke-filled bars and cafes for years...most of this health data about smoking is no more reliable than data about the deleterious effects of cannabis. I call bullshit on the numbers in this study. Smoke if you got'em.