Kick smoking habit, reduce heart disease
Nadira Gunatilleke
COLOMBO: Heart disease can be reduced by 35 per cent by not
smoking, Dr. Lakshmi Somathunga, Director, Non Communicable Diseases
said.
“Sri Lanka has seen a 20 per cent decrease in smokers, which is a
good sign,” Somathunga said.
She said about 30 per cent of Lankan males smoke and cigarette sales
had gone down by seven per cent. A person dies every eight seconds
somewhere in the world due to tobacco use and four million people die
annually.
Fifty per cent who smoke die due to a sickness caused by smoking,
Somathunga said Tobacco is the second major cause of death in the world.
It is well known that half the people who smoke regularly today (about
650 million people) will eventually be killed by tobacco.
When a person stops smoking, the risk of getting a sickness related
to smoking disappears after two years. Tobacco contains about 400
poisonous substances that have an adverse impact on health.
A smokers life expectancy is 22 years shorter than that of a non
smoker.
Hundreds of thousands of people who have never smoked die each year
from diseases caused by breathing second-hand tobacco smoke.
Passive smoking cause cancer as well as many serious respiratory and
cardiovascular diseases in children and adults, often leading to death.
There is no safe level of human exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke,
she said.
Smokers can be subjected to lung infections and bronchitis, heart
attacks, stomach ulcers, impotency, nerve weaknesses in legs and cancers
in mouth, throat, lungs, stomach, kidneys and bladder.
The right to clean air, free from tobacco smoke, is a human right.
Most people are non-smokers and have a right not to be exposed to
other people’s smoke.
Surveys show that smoking bans are widely supported by both smokers
and non-smokers.
Its time to take action, have your say and claim your right to clean
air. |