NHS campaign highlights ‘secondhand smoke’ dangers

A new advertising campaign from the NHS due to begin this week will highlight the dangers of passive, or secondhand smoking.

The Department of Health notes that 85 per cent of smoke emitted from cigarettes is both odourless and colourless, but claims that this smoke is as harmful to health as that which is visible.

Advertisements on television will be backed by an online, poster and press campaign reporting the risk of heart disease and lung cancer as a result of the 4,000 chemicals in secondhand smoke.

The government reports that this smoke is constituted from mainstream smoke exhaled and side-stream emissions from the end of the cigarette, with the latter containing high concentrations of ammonia, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.

Caroline Flint, public health minister, said: “Smoking is harmful not just to smokers but to the people around them.

“Wafting and blowing smoke away may seem like the right thing to do, but in reality it makes little difference to the amount of secondhand smoke inhaled by people around you.”

Last year, parliament voted to ban smoking in all enclosed public spaces, with the ban to come in effect from July 1st 2007.