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What is passive smoking?

It is when you breathe in smoke exhaled by smokers or from the smoke of burning cigarettes. This smoke is known as second-hand smoke or Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS).

Is it harmful?

Although passive smoking is not as harmful as smoking, it is still harmful and has been proven to cause:

  • Cancer of the lung, throat and voice box
  • Breast cancer
  • Heart disease and heart attack
  • Stroke
  • Narrowing of the blood vessels causing poor circulation in your hands, legs and feet
  • Diseases of the airways which make breathing more difficult such as emphysema, asthma and chronic bronchitis

Passive smoking and kids

A child’s lungs and body are smaller than an adult’s, which means that the poisons in cigarette smoke have an even more powerful effect on them. Some of the problems children risk developing through passive smoking include:

  • Asthma
  • Coughing and wheezing and breathlessness
  • Ear infections
  • Chest infections
  • Pneumonia and bronchitis
  • SIDS – sudden infant death syndrome, (when a baby suddenly stops breathing)


… and research is continuing to find that more and more diseases, including cancers, are linked to passive smoking.

Passive smoking and the law

While is still legal to smoke, non-smokers and children have the right not to be passive smokers. Our laws make it illegal to smoke in a workplace and in enclosed public and even some open public spaces. It is also illegal to smoke in a car with children.

See also on this website: Government Strategies & Legislation

Reducing the impact of ETS

It would be great if we could get everyone to quit smoking altogether, but in the meantime we can stop ETS from harming non-smokers and children by:

  • Making homes and cars smoke-free.
  • Implement smoke-free workplace policies and make sure people abide by them
  • Encourage smokers to think about where and when they light up and who is around them to breathe in their smoke
  • Encouraging non-smokers to ask smokers not to smoke around them or their kids.

Smoking in another room, by an open window or after the kids have gone to bed is not enough to avoid them being affected by passive smoking.

Tips to make your car and home smoke-free

  • Tell people that your car and home is smoke-free and that you are doing it to protect your kids health
  • Put up NO SMOKING signs and remove ashtrays form inside the house.
  • Provide visitors to your home with a comfortable place outside where they can smoke

Further reading

See the HealthInsite website page on passive smoking

Quit background brief on Secondhand Smoke

Centre for Community Child Health's practice resource Preventing passive smoking effects on children