Most people know that cigarette smoking can hurt their health. Scientific research shows that it causes many kinds of diseases. 
In fact, many people who smoke get lung cancer. Edward Gilson has lung cancer, however, and he has never smoked cigarettes. He lives with his wife, Evelyn, who has smoked about a pack of cigarettes a day throughout their marriage. The Gilsons have been married for 35 years.
No one knows for sure why Mr. Gilson has lung cancer. Even so, doctors believe that cigarette smoke has some relation to lung cancer in people who do not smoke, because they often breathe smoke coming from other people's cigarettes. This smoke is called secondhand smoke. Edward Gilson has been breathing this type of smoke for 35 years. Now he is dying of lung cancer. However, he is not alone. The United States Environmental Protection Agency reports that about 53,000 people die in the United States each year as a result of breathing in secondhand smoke.
The smoke that comes from the burning tobacco leaf in cigarettes contains many different dangerous materials, which are delivered into the body by the smoke. In the past, scientists thought that these materials could only hurt a smoker's health. Lately, though, scientists discovered that even people who didn't smoke had a lot of these dangerous materials in their bodies. Even if we don't realize it, nearly all of us may at some time draw in tobacco smoke with each breath. For example, we cannot avoid secondhand smoke in restaurants, hotels and other public places. Even though many public places have no smoking areas, smoke flows in from the areas where smoking is permitted.
In the United States, nine million children under the age of five live in homes with at least one smoker. Research shows that children who breathe secondhand smoke are sick more often than children who live in homes where no one smokes. The damaging effects of secondhand smoke on children also continue as they grow up. Even after they have grown up, lung cancer occurs in the children of smokers more than twice as often as the children of non-smokers. The risk is even higher for children who live in homes where both parents smoke.
Now, people no longer ignore the danger of secondhand smoke. As a result, they have passed laws which stop people from smoking in many public places. At the present time, 45 states in the United States have laws that limit smoking. The best known law prevents people from smoking on short airplane flights within the country.
After smoking for most of her life, Evelyn Gilson has finally stopped. She feels that if more people know about the dangers of secondhand smoke, they will be persuaded to stop. Her decision comes too late to help her husband. However, there is still time to come to the defense of others who live with smokers, especially children. Perhaps they will be more fortunate than Edward Gilson.
Words: 495
background information:
the United States Environmental Protection Agency: a governmental agency of the USA dealing with problems of environmental protection. Please look at http://www.epa.gov for more information that might interest you.
