Nonsmokers, Beware!

That warning on the cigarette package ("The Surgeon General has determined that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health") is directed, logically enough, at those who smoke. Last week Dr. Jesse L. Steinfeld, Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, pointed out the hazards for abstemious people who merely find themselves in the same room with smokers.

One risk is obvious: smoke-filled air contains visible smoke particles and invisible gases that may irritate the eyes and nasal passages. These same substances may also trigger allergic reactions. The least obvious and most insidious danger is that a colorless gas, carbon monoxide, may get into the nonsmoker's bloodstream in sufficient quantity to damage his heart and lungs or exacerbate heart-lung disease that he already has.

Traditionally, most laymen have thought of nicotine as the principal villain in tobacco. For two decades, scientists have been concentrating on "tars," a catchall term for the viscous gunk that is left from cigarette smoke after the gases and water vapor have been boiled off. Now, while they do not exonerate these culprits, researchers are studying carbon monoxide, a product of incomplete combustion in cigarettes as in automobile engines.

Inhaled carbon monoxide, in smokers and nonsmokers alike, enters the bloodstream through the inner surface of the lungs, competing with oxygen in the process. The result is that the hemoglobin of the red blood cells carries less oxygen than normal, plus a load of the poisonous carboxyhemo-globin. Cigar smoke presents a hazard similar to that from cigarettes.

Carbon monoxide concentrations from smoking, of course, do not reach the fatal levels found in a closed garage where a car engine has been left running. Still, a P.H.S. panel headed by Dr. Daniel Horn reported evidence of surprisingly high monoxide levels in smoke-filled rooms. The acceptable maximum in most industrial situations is 50 parts of carbon monoxide to 1,000,000 parts of air. A roomful of cigarette smokers, investigators found, raise the carbon monoxide content to between 20 and 80 p.p.m.

Stalemate. Steinfeld and his advisers wholeheartedly approve the measures taken to segregate smokers in airplanes, and urge that the rule be extended to cover all public places. For those who continue to smoke cigarettes (about 44 million Americans, by P.H.S. estimate) Steinfeld's latest report contained still more bad news. Already indicted as the major cause of lung cancer and, in combination with heavy drinking, cancer of the esophagus, smoking is now damned as a cause of bladder cancer and is strongly suspected of causing cancer in the pancreas. Steinfeld also said that there is stronger evidence than ever of the malign effects of smoking on a variety of heart, artery and lung conditions.

Advertising the dangers of cigarettes has had only mixed results. Steinfeld disputed a recent report that per capita consumption was rising. His figures for 1971 show an increase in cigarette sales of 1.5%, and the U.S. population went up by the same percentage. But the consumption decline evident between 1966 and 1970 seems to have stopped. Though many men have given up the habit, teen-agers and women are less easily discouraged. "At the moment," said Steinfeld, "we are at a stalemate." His one hope for those who cannot or will not quit: safer cigarettes can undoubtedly be manufactured. More efficient filters and different strains of tobacco would expose the smoker to less nicotine and tar. Reducing the carbon monoxide level will be more difficult.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.