Updated on Thursday, May 31, 2007, 00:00 IST

Washington, May 31: Tobacco is the second major cause of deaths worldwide. Half of the people who smoke regularly today – about 650 million – will eventually die of tobacco-related diseases.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 700 million children, or almost half of the world’s children, breathe air that is polluted by tobacco smoke, particularly in their homes. The International Labor Organization (ILO) says that at least 200,000 workers die every year due to exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke. There is no known safe level of human exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke, which causes cancer as well as serious respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in children and adults that lead to death.

This year’s World No Tobacco Day focuses on 100 percent Smoke-Free Environments as the only measure to protect people, especially women and children, and people in the workplace, from exposure to second hand tobacco smoke. Health experts stress that neither ventilation nor filtration – alone or in combination – can reduce exposure to tobacco smoke indoors to levels that are considered safe or acceptable.

World No Tobacco Day is observed around the world on May 31 each year. In 1987, the World Health Assembly – the supreme decision-making body of the WHO – passed a resolution calling for April 7, 1988, to be "a world no smoking day." In 1988, another resolution was passed designating May 31 every year as World No Tobacco Day.

As we observe World No Tobacco Day this year, we draw public attention to the "tobacco epidemic" and the preventable diseases and deaths it causes, and to the campaign to help reduce the millions of preventable deaths from tobacco-related health illnesses by campaigning for a smoke-free environment in our homes, communities, schools, and workplaces. The right to clean air – free from tobacco smoke – is a human right; most people are non-smokers and have the right not to be exposed to other people’s smoke.

Cigarette smoking is dangerous to your (and other people’s) health. Quit smoking and live longer.

Bureau Report