Environmental Tobacco Smoke

ENVIRONMENTAL TOBACCO SMOKE Tobacco smoking has long been recognized as a major cause of death and disease, responsible for an estimated 434,000 deaths per year in the United States. After the Environmental Protection Agency and the Surgeon General stated that cigarettes cause lung cancer there was a tremendous movement to make cigarettes illegal. Now the debate is on environmental tobacco smoke also known as secondhand smoke, passive smoking, and sidestream smoke. The worry is that when …

…to develop lung cancer than those married to non-smokers (LeMaistre 1). According to the Environmental Protection Agency a thirty percent risk is only a small relative risk. The Environmental Protection Agency released its report stating that environmental tobacco smoke is a human lung carcinogen, responsible for approximately three thousand lung cancer deaths annually in American non-smokers. Environmental tobacco smoke has been classified as a Group A carcinogen, the highest ranking under the EPA's carcinogen assessment guidelines.