More than 600,000 people killed by 2nd-hand smoke every year

And I'll estimate that Japan has the highest percentage of those deaths resulting from passive smoking. There is still no ban in Japan on smoking in restaurants all over other peoples food and even when the Japanese do make some pathetic token effort like the ban on smoking in public places in Minato-ku, they never enforce the law so people continue to smoke all over non-smokers. If this were the U.S or the U.K the lawyers would be making millions from lawsuits against local councils.

I am next. I just heard the click of a lighter as I type this. Help.

36,900 deaths from asthma

Nearly happened to me on several occasions. Got hospitalized in very bad condition. Izakaya smokers.

Good one cactusJack! LOL

Too many people killed by smoking, but it's only an estimate and not actual - "Scientists then estimated that passive smoking causes" is different from the headline "More than 600,000 people killed by 2nd-hand smoke every year".

Non factual reporting again.

My estimation of reporters who publish articles on the internet is that 98% of them are imbiciles, could be wrong and not factual but it is only an ESTIMATION.

Smokers do not care about themselves, they smoke in front of little babies, other people, they have no respect!

More evidence that we non smokers have every right to aggressively demand that smokers refrain from smoking in public places. They should not expose other people to this threat. And threat is exactly what the evidence demonstrates second hand smoke to be.

Why does the law forbid someone from fighting or threating your health and life in public, yet allows people to smoke and endanger others. The law should protect the innocent from second hand smoke.

So do the following.

Ban smoking in ALL public places. Allow cigarette companies to build tax free smoker havens. A bonus for our suicidal friends who persist in smoking. Tax one pack at + 1,500yen per pack. Will stop some people. Use the funds for the medical system. Tax sellers of tobacco 25% more per year than other shops to offset their negative impact on health care. Offer subsidies to shops who elect not to sell tobacco and help them find other business avenues. Offer 100% medical coverage of solutions to help people quit. Good investment.

Banning smoking in public might cause more harm than good -- my wife is a smoker, and because of the lack of places to smoke in public, she always wants to smoke in our home. And if I think I can't stop her, imagine how much harder it would be for a child to stop his mother or father from smoking in the house!

Time to get a non smoking wife. I would never ever even imagine having a stinky smokey wife.

Sadly I've developed bronchitis from 2nd hand smoke thanks to dealing with inconsiderate smokers everywhere I go. Plus watching the wonderful parents walking around with a baby or child in one hand and puffing away on another always annoys me. When I was 4 years old I remember reaching for my babysitter's ciggy, after I took a suck I coughed my lungs out and my babysitter told me, "And that is why you should NEVER smoke". Never touched a cancer-stick since then xD. Sure its a bad way to teach a child but it was the 70s and people were ignorant then and less about being inconsiderate. I don't mind people smoking, as long as it doesn't affect others around them.

Do not let anyone smoke in your home if you have children. Totally irresponsible. Smokers SUCK!

Banning smoking in public might cause more harm than good -- my wife is a smoker, and because of the lack of places to smoke in public, she always wants to smoke in our home. And if I think I can't stop her, imagine how much harder it would be for a child to stop his mother or father from smoking in the house!

Thon, my missus is a smoker too (being Japanese it's almost compulsory) but she ain't allowed to smoke anywhere inside. And with two kids, I make her smoke outside even when it's zero degrees outside in the winter. I've caught her smoking in the kitchen before and the cigarettes went straight in the bin.

The anti-smokers are guilty of flagrant fraud for ignoring more than 50 studies which show that human papillomaviruses cause over ten times more lung cancers than those charlatans pretend are caused by secondhand smoke. Their "studies" are based on nothing but lifestyle questionnaires, so they're cynically designed to exploit the fact that smokers and passive smokers are more likely to have been exposed to this virus for socioeconomic reasons.

They're guilty of fraud for ignoring the fact that death rates from heart disease since 1970 have declined as much among smokers as among non-smokers: When the sharp decline in heart disease death rates began in the United States in the 1960s, it was the same in smokers as in non-smokers: "Nonsudden CHD death decreased by 64% (95% CI 50% to 74%, Ptrend<0.001), and SCD rates decreased by 49% (95% CI 28% to 64%, Ptrend<0.001). These trends were seen in men and women, in subjects with and without a prior history of CHD, and in smokers and nonsmokers." (Temporal trends in coronary heart disease mortality and sudden cardiac death from 1950 to 1999: the Framingham Heart Study. CS Fox, JC Evans, MG Larson, WB Kannel, D Levy. Circulation 2004 Aug 3;110(5):522-527.) The decline in cigarette smoking has been much greater in middle-aged men than in middle-aged women, which is not at all in accord with the equivalence in the decline in mortality for the sexes. The decline in this study parallels the decline nationwide, and it began before there were any appreciable number of smoking bans.

Smokers and passive smokers are more likely to have been exposed to infectious causes of heart disease, such as cytomegalovirus, again for socioeconomic reasons. THIS fact is what really accounts for their lie that secondhand smoke is as dangerous to non-smokers as active smoking.

The anti-smokers have committed this same type of fraud with every disease they blame on tobacco. And this trash isn't even a study, its BS generated by a computer program, whose presumptions are based on this scientific fraud. Spreading lies based on deliberate scientific fraud to scare the public about phony "dangers" of secondhand smoke is an act of terrorism no different in nature from calling in a phony bomb threat. And it's even more morally reprehensible, because it's designed to persecute innocent people and deprive them of their rights to liberty.

Scientists then estimated that passive smoking causes about 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 deaths from lower respiratory disease, 36,900 deaths from asthma and 21,400 deaths from lung cancer a year.

This article is based upon an exercise in statistics and estimates with not a single actual smoking related death to back it up. This study is too generic to be taken seriously. I would even say that it is more of a political statement than serious science. It is clearly aimed at providing a pseudo-scientific rational for government to control the personal behaviour of individuals that smoke.

I am a non-smoker, I know it's bad for a persons health, and hate inhaling second-hand smoke as much as anyone. In fact, he often makes me physically sick. But just because I don't like something doesn't mean I should be telling other people what they can do in their own house or in the public square. It is a legal product that has become a major vehicle for transferring the wealth of primarily lower-income people to the government in the form of very high tax rates.

Most of the smokers that I know are very considerate of others and do their best not annoy me with their habit. Although an occasional lung full of someone elses cigarette smoke is not pleasant, it won't kill me either. Please people, stop trying to micro-manage other peoples lives and worry about your own dangerous eating, drinking, drug, and/or other unhealthy habit that will likely kill you or someone else. The use of government to regulate peronal behavior is ridiculous. If it's not cigarettes, it's cooking oil, salt, or something else.

Another bogus statistic. Sure, smoking is unhealthy; common sense tells you that. But where do these figures come from? Out of thin air, that is where.