This is a first victory for the victims of passive smoking: a Toulouse teacher who had to have one of her lungs removed due to cancer while she was not smoking, has just obtained compensation. The Bordeaux Court of Appeal has just recognized the link between her lung cancer and the fact that the school where she taught did not apply the anti-smoking law in public places.
Passive smoking: the alarm bells
The figures on passive smoking are mainly disseminated by the World Health Organization, which has looked into this public health problem since 2004. As the organization writes in its convention for the fight against tobacco: ” Passive smoking results from the smoke that invades restaurants, offices or other enclosed spaces when tobacco products, such as cigarettes, bidis or water pipes, are burned. Its harmful effects affect everyone. And there is no threshold below which exposure to tobacco smoke would be safe. “
Passive smoking: responsible for one in 100 deaths
In adults, passive smoking causes severe cardiovascular illnesses and respiratory, including coronary heart disease and lung cancer. In toddlers, it can lead to sudden infant death syndrome. As for pregnant women, they risk giving birth to babies with low birth weight.
>> To read also: Why tobacco and pregnancy do not mix
Young people exposed to second-hand smoke in the home are one and a half to two times more likely to start smoking than children who are not. As for the children exposed to cigarette smoke in car, they are directly affected by fine particle pollution three times higher than the standard imposed by the WHO.
To highlight the harmful effects of passive smoking, the WHO comes out with relentless figures: passive smoking is responsible for more than 600,000 deaths per year in the world, that is to say one in 100 deaths. And if we only take into account that deaths caused by tobacco, passive smoking is responsible for one in 10 deaths. Exposure to second-hand smoke is therefore responsible for 379,000 deaths from ischemic heart disease each year, 165,000 deaths caused by respiratory infections, 36,900 case-related deaths. asthma and 21,400 lung cancer deaths.
