This handout image, released on Nov 10, 2010, depicts a mother blowing cigarette smoke in a child's face in one of the Federal Drug Administration's proposed new "graphic health warnings." |
Around one in a hundred deaths worldwide is due to passive smoking, which kills an estimated 600,000 people a year, World Health Organization (WHO) researchers said on Friday. In the first study to assess the global impact of second-hand smoke, WHO experts found that children are more heavily exposed to second-hand smoke than any other age-group, and around 165,000 of them a year die because of it. "Two-thirds of these deaths occur in Africa and South Asia," the researchers, led by Annette Pruss-Ustun of the WHO in Geneva, wrote in their study. Children's exposure to second-hand smoke is most likely to happen at home, and the double blow of infectious diseases and tobacco "seems to be a deadly combination for children in these regions", they said. Commenting on the findings in the Lancet journal, Heather Wipfli and Jonathan Samet from the University of Southern California said policymakers try to motivate families to stop smoking in the home. "In some countries, smoke-free homes are becoming the norm, but far from universally," they wrote. The WHO researchers looked at data from 192 countries for their study. To get comprehensive data from all 192, they had to go back to 2004. They used mathematical modeling to estimate deaths. Worldwide, 40 percent of children, 33 percent of non-smoking men and 35 percent non-smoking women were exposed to second-hand smoke in 2004, they found. This exposure was estimated to have caused 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 from lower respiratory infections, 36,900 from asthma and 21,400 from lung cancer. For the full impact of smoking, these deaths should be added to the estimated 5.1 million deaths a year attributable to active tobacco use, the researchers said. While deaths due to passive smoking in children were skewed toward poor and middle-income countries, deaths in adults were spread across countries at all income levels. In Europe's high-income countries, only 71 child deaths occurred, while 35,388 deaths were in adults. Yet in the countries assessed in Africa, an estimated 43,375 deaths due to passive smoking were in children compared with 9,514 in adults. (Read by Renee Haines. Renee Haines is a journalist at the China Daily Web site.) (Agencies) |
世界衛(wèi)生組織的研究人員周五稱,全球每100例死亡中就有1例是死于被動(dòng)吸煙,每年全球約有60萬人死于二手煙。 這一研究首次對(duì)二手煙的全球影響進(jìn)行了評(píng)估。世界衛(wèi)生組織的專家發(fā)現(xiàn),兒童比其他年齡段的人更多的暴露于二手煙環(huán)境中,每年約有16.5萬兒童因此喪命。 研究人員在報(bào)告中寫道:“因吸入二手煙而導(dǎo)致的死亡有三分之二發(fā)生在非洲和南亞?!笨偛课挥谌諆?nèi)瓦的世界衛(wèi)生組織的安妮特?普魯絲-烏斯頓是這一研究的領(lǐng)頭人。 他們稱,兒童在家中暴露于二手煙的情況最多,傳染病和煙草的雙重侵害“對(duì)于這些地區(qū)的兒童似乎是一個(gè)致命的組合”。 來自南加州大學(xué)的希瑟?威普弗利和喬納森?沙美對(duì)發(fā)表在《柳葉刀》雜志上的這一研究報(bào)告做了評(píng)論。他們說,決策者試圖對(duì)家庭實(shí)施激勵(lì)手段,阻止在家中吸煙的行為。 他們寫道:“在一些國(guó)家,無煙家庭越來越常見,但離普及還相差得很遠(yuǎn)?!?/p> 為了進(jìn)行這一研究,世界衛(wèi)生組織的研究人員查看了來自192個(gè)國(guó)家的資料。他們還查看了2004年的資料,以得到192個(gè)國(guó)家的全面信息,并用數(shù)學(xué)模式來估算死亡人數(shù)。 他們發(fā)現(xiàn),在2004年,世界范圍內(nèi)有40%的兒童、33%的不吸煙男性和35%的不吸煙女性暴露于二手煙環(huán)境下。 經(jīng)過估算,這種二手煙環(huán)境已導(dǎo)致37.9萬人死于心臟病,16.5萬人死于下呼吸道感染,3.69萬人死于哮喘病,2.14萬人死于肺癌。 研究人員說,為了全面反映吸煙造成的影響,這些死亡人數(shù)也應(yīng)該加入每年死于主動(dòng)吸煙的約510萬人。 盡管被動(dòng)吸煙造成的兒童死亡多發(fā)生于中低收入的國(guó)家,吸二手煙而導(dǎo)致的成人死亡在各個(gè)收入水平的國(guó)家中卻普遍存在。 在歐洲的高收入國(guó)家中,只發(fā)生了71例因被動(dòng)吸煙而導(dǎo)致的兒童死亡,而二手煙導(dǎo)致的成人死亡卻有3.5萬例。但是在接受評(píng)估的非洲國(guó)家中,被動(dòng)吸煙導(dǎo)致的死亡人口約有4.3萬為兒童,9514人為成人。 相關(guān)閱讀 美國(guó):香煙盒將采用新警示標(biāo)識(shí) 關(guān)注世界無煙日 學(xué)習(xí)相關(guān)詞匯 (中國(guó)日?qǐng)?bào)網(wǎng)英語點(diǎn)津 陳丹妮 編輯:馮明惠) |
Vocabulary: skewed toward: 偏向于 |