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

Healthy discoveries

World Health Organisation (WHO) researchers said that around 1% deaths worldwide is because of passive smoking, which kills about 600,000 people a year.


In the first study to assess the global effect of second-hand smoke, WHO proficient found that children are more insecure second-hand smoke than any other age-group, and about 65,000 of them a year die because of it….


The Scientists led by Annette Pruss-Ustun of the WHO in Geneva wrote in their study that 2/3 of deaths happened in Africa and south Asia.


Exposing children to secondhand smoke is most likely to happen at home, and the double blow of infectious illness and tobacco "seems a fatal combination for children in this region" they said.


Commenting on the results in the journal Lancet, said Jonathan Samet Heather Wipfli and the University of Southern California and policymakers make effort to motivate families to prevent smoking at home.


Also they wrote that In some countries smokefree homes are becoming the norm but far from universally.


The WHO researchers analyzed data from 192 countries for their study. To get extensive data from all 192, they had to go back to 2004. They used mathematical modelling to assess deaths and the number of years lost of life in good health.


Globally, They found that 40% of children, 33% of non-smoking men and 35% non-smoking women were exposed to second-hand smoke in 2004.


It is estimated that exposure have caused 379,000 deaths from heart illness, 36,900 from asthma, 165,000 from lower respiratory infections and 21,400 from lung cancer.


The researchers said that for the full effect of smoking, these deaths should be added to about 5.1 million deaths a year attributable to active tobacco use.

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