Cigarette smoking and its effects on children?
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, causing almost one in five of all deaths in this country each year, totaling nearly half a million Americans. When many people think of tobacco-related health problems, they think only of adults, and the heart disease, cancer, and emphysema directly resulting from their long-term smoking. But children and adolescents suffer from serious tobacco-related health problems as well. Almost half of all homes in America have at least one smoker living there. This means that millions of children in the United States cannot help breathing secondhand smoke in their own homes. This puts them in more danger than most smokers realize. Secondhand smoke is the smoke a smoker breathes out, and that comes from the tip of burning cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. It contains over 4000 chemicals, many of which are poisonous and dangerous, including more than 50 known to cause cancer. Not surprising then that the U.S. Environmental Protec
