The main purpose of the Smoke-Free Arizona Act is to protect Arizonans from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke whether they are at work or in public. Below are some facts that illustrate how harmful secondhand smoke can be:

• 4,000 chemical compounds have been identified in secondhand smoke, 200 are poisons and at least 40 cause cancer.¹
  
  
• Smoke-filled rooms have up to six times the air pollution as a busy highway.²
  
  
• Secondhand smoke will stay in an enclosed environment for approximately two weeks before the air is officially clean.³
  
  
• In the United States, annual healthcare expenditures solely from secondhand smoke exposure total $4.98 billion.⁴
  
  
• Secondhand smoke is responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in U.S. non-smokers.⁵
  
  
• Secondhand smoke has been estimated to result in at least 53,000 annual deaths in the United States.⁶
  
  
• In the United States 43% of children aged 11 years and under live in a household with at least one smoker.⁷ By age five, each of these children will have inhaled the equivalent of 102 packs of cigarettes.⁸
  
  
• Exposure to the secondhand smoke of just one cigarette per day accelerates the progression of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries).⁶
  
  
• Environmental Tobacco Smoke contains at least 250 chemicals known to be toxic or cause cancer. Unfortunately, the general public’s exposure to secondhand smoke is much higher than most people realize.⁹
  
  
• Secondhand smoke is sometimes referred to as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning ends of a cigarette, pipe, cigar, bidis, and kreteks (sidestream smoke) and the smoke emitted at the mouthpiece and exhaled from the lungs of smokers (mainstream smoke).¹⁰
  
  
• The widespread practice of smoking in buildings exposes non-smoking occupants to combustion by-products under conditions where airborne contaminant removal is slow and uncertain. Over the past two decades, medical science has shown that nonsmokers suffer many of the diseases of active smoking when they breathe secondhand smoke.¹¹
  
  

Additional Information

• Bureau of Tobacco Education and Prevention Program: Secondhand smoke
• CDC Smoking and Tobacco Use
• Kids Involuntarily Inhaling Secondhand Smoke (KIISS)

References

• ¹American Lung Association
• ²Centers for Disease Control, It's Time to Stop Being a passive Victim, 1993;
• ³Environmental Journal, 1986: 11:3
• ⁴Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
• ⁵Centers for Disease Control, Tobacco Use in the U.S., (Retrieved Sept. 30, 2003)
• ⁶American Heart Association
• ⁷Pirkle JL, Flegal KM, Bernert JT, Brody DJ, Etzel RA, Maurer KR, Exposure of the US population to environmental tobacco smoke: the Third National Health & Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-1991. JAMA 1996; 275:1233-1240;
• ⁸Hammond, S. K., Sorensen, G., Youngstrom, R., and Ockene, J.K., Occupational Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke. JAMA 274 (1995): 956 - 960
• ⁹National Toxicology Program, 11th Report on Carcinogens, 2005. Research Triangle Park, NC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Sciences, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, 2000 (Cited 2006 Sep 27).
• ¹⁰U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Health Effects of Exposure to Secondhand Smoke
• ¹¹J. L., Kawachi, I., Glantz, S. Fact Sheet on Secondhand Smoke, 1999.