V O A Health Report: Smoking Ban

V O A Health Report
City Has a Lot Fewer Heart Attacks After Smoking Ban




This is the *** Special English Health Report.

More than twenty of the fifty American states ban smoking in public places.
Many other states have partial bans. And many local governments have
their own restrictions.

A new study has found the strongest evidence yet that smoke-free laws
can reduce a major effect of tobacco smoking -- heart disease.

The study took place in Pueblo, Colorado. In July of two thousand three
that city banned smoking in public places and workplaces.

In the year and a half before the ban, hospitals had three hundred ninety-nine
admissions for heart attacks. In a similar period starting eighteen months
after the ban, the number was two hundred thirty-seven. That was a decrease
of forty-one percent.

The study found that heart attack admissions have continued to fall.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report on the
findings. C.D.C. official Janet Collins says breathing secondhand smoke has
immediate harmful effects on a person's heart-and-lung system. Over the long
term, secondhand smoke also raises the risk of disease in nonsmokers. Each
year in the United States, secondhand smoke kills an estimated forty-six
thousand nonsmokers from heart attacks.

The researchers found no considerable change in the number of heart attacks
in areas near Pueblo without smoking bans. Doctor Terry Pechacek at the
C.D.C. says the findings should persuade every country that smoking in
enclosed spaces is very dangerous to nonsmokers.

Adults may think they are protecting children from secondhand smoke when
they smoke outside their home or only when the children are not there. But
now researchers led by Doctor Jonathan Winickoff at MassGeneral Hospital
for Children in Boston are warning about what they call "third-hand smoke."

When you smoke, he says, dangerous matter from tobacco smoke gets into
your hair and clothing. Then, when you come into contact with a baby, the baby
comes into contact with those toxins.

The researchers did a study of adult beliefs about the possibility of health risks
to children from third-hand smoke. People who agreed that environmental smoke
was harmful to children's health were more likely to have restrictions on smoking
in their homes. The findings appear this month in the journal Pediatrics.

And that's the *** Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver.
Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports are at ***specialenglish.com.
I'm Steve Ember.