Search Results for: blog secondhand smoke is deadly to everyone

Secondhand Smoke and Pets

There’s a lot of evidence out there that secondhand smoke is bad for you. It can cause issues with fertility, your heart, your lungs, and more. But it’s not just people who are in danger — secondhand smoke is also bad for your pets. When you inhale secondhand smoke, you’re getting all the bad stuff that’s in cigarettes… without the benefit of the cigarette’s filter. The same goes for your pets! Their lungs are in danger from the same stuff, for the same reason. But there’s a secondary danger with pets and secondhand smoke. Many animals groom themselves — and … Continue reading →

Great American Smokeout 2009: Measuring Success

I read a very interesting thing on the American Cancer Society website about quitting smoking and how you measure success. Many people look at the success rates of a particular quitting smoking program before they decide whether or not to try it. But the ACS points out a few problems with that. For one thing: not all programs define success in the same way. Some may measure a “success” as a person not smoking for six months, while another may call reaching the one year mark a “success”. So before you even start, you need to figure out how YOU … Continue reading →

How Close Are We To A Smoke-Free Workplace?

More and more places are banning smoking in public places. Twenty-eight states and territories in the United States have some sort of smoking ban in effect, but a recent report from the American Lung Association says that most states just aren’t spending enough money on smoking prevention and cessation programs. The American Lung Association’s “State of Tobacco Control Report Card” was released at the beginning of January. The report agrees that yes — banning smoking, putting high taxes on cigarettes, and offering tobacco prevention programs does work. However, they feel that the political will to make it all happen is … Continue reading →

When Your Teen Wants To Smoke

Too many teens are tempted to try smoking for various reasons. Maybe they want to fit in with the rest of the smokers. Maybe they want to look older. Maybe they like the thrill of doing something they shouldn’t. If you want to guide your teen away from smoking, the following tips can be useful: Be open and honest about the dangers of smoking. There are plenty of places to find information about what smoking does to your body. Start here. Start talking to your children about smoking at a very young age. You don’t have to make it scary, … Continue reading →

American Lung Association Releases the State of the Air Report

The American Lung Association (ALA) released its “State of the Air” report yesterday, which looks at the ozone and particle pollution levels across the U.S. for 2006, 2007 and 2008. As with most reports, there is good news and bad news. The year-round, annual particle pollution levels showed improvement. But, there are also more than 175 million Americans that are still breathing polluted air. In case you were wondering, that is about 58 percent of our total population. The ALA released a list of cities that are most polluted, based on ozone, short-term particle spikes, and long-term particle averages. Unfortunately … Continue reading →

Smoking Ban Reduces Heart Attacks

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control took a look at the relationship between public smoking bans and heart attack rates — and found some encouraging news. On July 1, 2003, Pueblo, Colorado banned smoking in workplaces. Over the three years following the ban, the rate of people hospitalized for heart attacks dropped more than forty percent. Pretty amazing, huh? Areas around Pueblo that had no such smoking ban saw little change in their heart attack rates. This leads CDC researchers to believe that the ban was directly responsible for the change. The bad news? Secondhand smoke may be a bigger … Continue reading →

Cataracts

More than half of all Americans over the age of sixty-five have cataracts. A cataract is a clouding of the lens in your eye that can impair your vision. For you to see, light must pass through your cornea, pupil, and the fluid inside your eyeball (called aqueous humor) before it hits the lens. The lens takes the light rays and bends them into focus onto the retina at the back of the eye. From the retina, the optic nerve takes the information and sends it to the brain as images. A buildup of protein in the lens creates a … Continue reading →

Banned from Saturday Night Live – Part II

Yesterday, I was listing guest hosts and musical acts banned from Saturday Night Live. Some of the performances are hard to forget and some people, you may not even remember ever being on Saturday Night Live. Here’s more of the list: Fear The band Fear was a favorite of show regular John Belushi, so he pushed for them to appear as a musical act. Unfortunately, they played offensive songs, used obscene language, and the slam dancers they bused in destroyed the set. Needless to say, they were never invited back. Robert Blake You may remember Robert Blake from the murder … Continue reading →