• Question: Can you get cancer by being around an environment where people smoke

    Asked by sophieb to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 17 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Anastasia Wass

      Anastasia Wass answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Breathing in other peoples cigarette fumes is called passive smoking. It can increase your risk of developing cancer (though not as much as actually smoking yourself). This is why smoking is banned in public places and in cars with children in.

    • Photo: Matthew Lam

      Matthew Lam answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      It is possible because the chemicals in tobacco smoke that can cause cancer are still present in the ‘second hand’ smoke breathed out by smokers. The chemicals are at much lower levels though so the damage is a lot less than if you are the person smoking.

    • Photo: Andrea Hanvey

      Andrea Hanvey answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Interestingly there was news on this this weekend. Third hand smoke which is the brown sticky tar stuff on the walls and furniture in smokers houses is said to be more deadly to children than second hand smoke. This is because Childrens toys that environment get coated in the carcinogens from the smoke. children especially small toddlers put the toys in their mouth all the time! this is exposing them to harmful carcinogens.

    • Photo: Leah Fitzsimmons

      Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      The others are right – cigarette smoke contains harmful chemicals and being exposed to it is never good for you, although the person who is smoking gets exposed to higher concentrations of the harmful chemicals than people around them.
      Being exposed to smoke from other people’s cigarettes is unlikely to cause someone to get cancer by itself, but it could increase the number of cells in the body that go wrong and need to be removed by the body before they can become dangerous. Only if a faulty cell escapes the body’s normal defenses will it be able to grow into a tumour.

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