Secondhand smoke is one of the leading preventable causes of death in Canada (www.toronto.ca/health/). Although no one likes to admit it, tobacco is as damaging to human development as any other drug. Tobacco has over 4000 chemicals while at least 50 of them have been proven to cause cancer (www.gov.mb.ca/health/). Smoking habits have been known to exist among women in the prenatal stage. The mothers are allowing hazardous chemicals to harm their unborn babies and then when they cannot kick the habit of smoking they later harm their children as they subject them to secondhand smoke. Considering all of the health risks and knowledge associated with the many chemicals in tobacco and how they can affect one’s body, people should begin to realize that if smoking is not healthy for themselves or other people, then they definitely will not be healthy for an unborn baby or a small child. Hence, first and secondhand smoke can have significant short term and long term effects on fetal development, overall human development and especially brain development.
Firsthand and second smoke can both do great harm to one’s body; the difference between them is basically categorizing firsthand smokers as people actually committing the act of smoking from second hand smokers those who inhale the toxins unwillingly from other people smoking. Tobacco smoke is defined as the act of smoking tobacco products such as cigarettes or cigars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke).
Whatever a mother smokes, the same toxins are going right through to the baby. Whereas secondhand smoke is defined as also known as environmental tobacco smoke(ETS), it is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a tobacco product (side stream smoke) and the smoke exhaled by a smoker (mainstream smoke)(www.babump.com/city5767/). Both ways of inhaling smoke are harmful to one’s health. Secondhand smoke can be worse depending on the level of exposure. Secondhand smokers are not only inhaling the...