- People at risk of heart disease should avoid buildings
where smoking is permitted, the federal agency for public health in the
United States said yesterday in the starkest warning yet about the dangers
of tobacco.
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- Even 30 minutes of exposure to other people's smoke,
while eating in a restaurant or sitting in an office, might be enough to
trigger a fatal heart attack for those at risk, the Centres for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta said.
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- It is the first time the US government agency in charge
of protecting the nation's health has told non-smokers that they should
not enter buildings or enclosed spaces where other people are smoking.
The warning comes in the wake of growing evidence that, in addition to
the well-known long-term effects of smoking in causing heart disease and
cancer, toxins in tobacco smoke also have rapid short-term effects in causing
the blood to clot.
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- The UK Department of Health said yesterday that it had
consistently said smoke-free polices were the ideal and had drawn attention
in leaflets to the immediate effects of second-hand smoke on the heart.
A spokeswoman said: "People with heart conditions do need to take
extra precautions."
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- The CDC's stronger warning is contained in a commentary,
published in the British Medical Journal, accompanying a study of Helena,
a small town in Montana, which banned smoking in public in June 2002 only
to have the ban rescinded six months later by opponents of the law.
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- During the ban, when smoking was outlawed in offices,
factories, restaurants, bars and all public enclosed spaces, heart attack
admissions to the local hospital fell by 40 per cent. After the ban was
lifted, the heart attack rate increased to its former level.
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- The study was first published online earlier this month
at www.bmj.com, but this week it has appeared in the paper edition of the
journal with, for the first time, the commentary by the CDC.
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- Even eating in a smoky restaurant could cause a heart
attack, said the authors, Terry Pechacek and Stephen Babb of the Office
on Smoking and Health at the CDC. They said: "As unlikely as this
sounds, a growing body of scientific data suggests that this is possible."
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- Scientists have been puzzled by the disproportionate
risks associated with passive smoking. A non-smoker who lives with a person
who smokes 20 cigarettes a day has one-third of the risk of their partner,
even though they are actually exposed to only 1 per cent of the smoke.
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- Laboratory evidence suggests that this is because toxins
in tobacco smoke peak at low levels of exposure, increasing the stickiness
of the blood (the tendency of the platelets to aggregate) and inflaming
the arteries, increasing the risk of thrombosis - a blood clot that can
trigger a heart attack.
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- The result is that the risk of heart problems increases
rapidly for people who smoke one to five cigarettes a day, but then rises
more slowly as smoking increases to 20 cigarettes a day.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/story.jsp?story=515698
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