They don't have a choice...you do.

Consider the following powerful facts regarding secondhand smoke and children:

• 9-12 million children under 5 years of age are exposed to secondhand smoke in the home.
• Children who breathe secondhand smoke suffer significantly more from colds, coughs, pneumonia, bronchitis, middle ear infections, and asthma attacks.
• Secondhand smoke can damage developing organs, such as the lungs.
• When you smoke near a child, the child is passively smoking too.

Children are especially sensitive to secondhand smoke. Asthma, lung infections, and ear infections are more common in children who are around smokers.

Some of these problems can be serious and even life-threatening. Others may seem like small problems, but they add up quickly: think of the expenses, doctor visits, medicines, lost school time, and often lost work time for the parent who must take the child to the doctor.

Secondhand Smoke is toxic! 

Everyone has the right to breath clean air in workplaces and public places because secondhand smoke causes heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses. 

Secondhand smoke has more than 4,000 chemicals.  You breathe in these chemicals when you are around someone who is smoking.

Cancer Causing Chemicals: 

All are extremely toxic...

• Formaldehyde-used to embalm dead bodies
• Benzene-found in gasoline
• Polonium 210-radioactive and very toxic
• Viny Chloride-used to make pipes

Toxic Metals: 

Can cause cancer, death, and damage the brain and kidneys...

• Chromium-used to make steel
• Arsenic-used in pesticides
• Lead-once used in paint
• Cadmium-used in making batteries

Poison Gases: 

Can cause death, affect heart and respiratory functions, burn your throat, lungs, and eyes, and cause unconsciousness...

• Toluene-found in paint thinners 
• Ammonia-used in household cleaners
• Butane-used in lighter fluid
• Hydrogen Cyanide-used in chemical weapons
• Carbon Monoxide-found in car exhaust

Source:  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Too Many Montanans Are Still Exposed to Secondhand Tobacco Smoke

New rearch, new urgency

New research on secondhand smoke and the heart shows that there are more severe and immediate health effects than we previously thought.

Secondhand tobacco smoke causes reactions in the heart very quickly. In as few as 30 minutes, secondhand smoke exposure can cause heart attacks for people at risk for heart disease.

Dr. Robert Shepard, Medical Director at New West Health Services in Helena, Montana and a well-known champion of Montana’s Clean Indoor Air Act cites over 50 epidemiology studies that demonstrate the effects of secondhand smoke on the human body.

Shepard has identified specific risks to the heart, which are magnified by secondhand smoke. These risks, in turn, increase the risk of heart attacks in non-smokers exposed to secondhand smoke.

Non-smokers, when exposed for 30 minutes to secondhand smoke, have platelets which look exactly like a smoker. They are activated and ready to create a clot. The clot is solid, the artery is too small, and the blood cannot flow; causing a heart attack.

Secondhand smoke also kills the cells lining the artery which control the ability of the artery to dilate and thus heightens the risk of spasms increasing the risk of a heart attack.

The message is loud and clear for those who will listen.

There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.

And until we reach the tipping point that protects all of us from secondhand smoke, an estimated 175 Montanans who never smoked will die each year from breathing someone else's tobacco smoke.