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Second-hand smoke: Environmental tobacco smoke that is inhaled involuntarily or passively by someone who is not smoking.
Environmental tobacco smoke is generated from the sidestream (the burning end) of a cigarette, pipe or cigar or from the exhaled mainstream (the smoke puffed out by smokers) of cigarettes, pipes, and cigars.
Environmental tobacco smoke was classified as a "known human carcinogen" by the US government in 2000, based on the causal relationship observed between passive exposure to tobacco smoke and human lung cancer and based also on studies that have conclusively shown an increased risk of lung cancer in nonsmoking women living with smoking husbands or working with smoking co-workers.
Environmental tobacco smoke is abbreviated ETS. Inhaling ETS is called involuntary or passive smoking.
To be more concrete, if someone in your house or restaurant or office or anywhere around you smokes, you are smoking, too. You, too, can get lung cancer and the other diseases now known to be associated with smoking. And you, too, are running the same increased risks to become sick and also, incidentally, to die.
Non-smokers who breathe in secondhand smoke take in nicotine and other toxic chemicals just like smokers do. The more secondhand smoke you are exposed to, the higher the ...
A fact sheet that summarizes the studies on the health effects of exposure to environmental (second hand) tobacco smoke. National Cancer Institute Fact Sheet 10.18
You don't have to be a smoker for smoking to harm you. You can also have health problems from breathing in other people's smoke. Secondhand smoke is the combination ...
The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General
Secondhand smoke is defined as the smoke which is exhaled by the smoker plus the smoke created by the smouldering of a lit cigarette. The effects of secondhand ...