Cigarette smoke is full of harmful chemicals. Breathing in secondhand smoke is harmful for smokers and nonsmokers alike. Smokers suffer a double dose though, increasing the destructive effects of secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke kills about 3,000 nonsmokers each year from lung cancer. Secondhand smoke causes 30 times as many lung cancer deaths as all regulated pollutants combined. Secondhand smoke causes up to 300,000 lung infections (such as pneumonia and bronchitis) in infants and young children each year. Secondhand smoke causes wheezing, coughing, colds, earaches, and asthma attacks. Secondhand smoke can produce six times the pollution of a busy highway when in a crowded restaurant. Secondhand smoke fills the air with many of the same poisons found in the air around toxic waste dumps.
