14 DAY TRIAL // In October 2013, the World Health Organization labeled air pollution a leading cause of cancer. Interestingly enough, it appears that simply sharing a house with a smoker can affect one's health just as much as living in a highly polluted city would.
In a recent paper, researchers in Scotland argue that people who live with smokers are likely to breathe in air whose concentration of harmful particles exceeds standards 3 times over.
This means that previous investigations linking second-hand smoking to respiratory and heart conditions really were on to something, the Scottish scientists argue.
As part of their investigation into how living with a smoker can affect one's overall wellbeing, the Scottish specialists documented air concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in 93 smoking and 17 non-smoking homes.
They found that, on average, the air concentration of fine particulate matter was 10 times greater in the households inhabited by smokers than in the households that were cigarettes-free.
This means that, over a period of time of 80 years, a non-smoker living in a smoking home can inhale as much as 5.82 grams (0.2 ounces) of fine particulate matter.
Apparently, the amount of fine particulate matter that non-smokers are exposed to in smoking homes is comparable to the one that folks living in polluted urban areas like Beijing and London breathe in on a daily basis.
“These measurements show that second-hand tobacco smoke can produce very high levels of toxic particles in your home,” Dr. Sean Semple of University of Aberdeen commented on these findings, as cited by EurekAlert.
“These findings ultimately support the need for efforts to reduce second hand smoke exposure in the home, most notably through the implementation of smoke free home rules and smoke free multi-unit housing policies,” he and his colleagues recommended.