What to do about second-hand smoke?!?!?!?!?

Question

My boyfriend's step-father smokes (ALOT) and it really, really bothers me. After a couple days, when I stay over there, my chest feels sore, my sinuses burn, my ears itch, and my throat gets scratchy. My boyfriend (non-smoker) doesn't have a problem with it because he has lived with it all his life, but I haven't and I get really upset about it. I used to stay over there quite a bit, but it made everyone uncomfortable, because that is the "smoker's" house and he has a right to smoke in it. Still, what is the difference in putting my housedog in her pen when I have company and someone not smoking around me? It is a matter of respect, I think.
I have alot of worries about our future. If we married and had children I wouldn't want them to be exposed to second-hand smoke. What are some things to try or talk about to come to a compromise?
I am really dreading this New Year's Eve. We are supposed to be going over there to play games and watch movies. What will I do?

Answer 1

You need to sit down with your boyfriend and explain to him just how much this bothers you. There are medical reasons for your concerns as well as the fact that you are uncomftoable around it.

Is staying in a hotel a possibility? And just going over during the day to visit him?

I am a smoker, and whenever I have company over I always ask if they mind if I smoke. If they do then I just go out back to have my cigarette. But not everyone feels this way they figure its there house and they will smoke in it if they want to.

But maybe your BF does not understand how much this bothers you, you really need to try and talk with him first and see where this goes.

Answer 2

You have more of a risk by breathing the air outside than catching second hand smoke. Stop being a big baby and leave the room if you don't like the smoke. I am so sick of people complaining about things and still sit there and take it. You need to understand that you are in their home and they don't have to accomodate you. When you get your own place then you can tell them not to smoke in your house. If they smoke then leave the room. Otherwise, find yourself someone with parents who don't smoke. These are minor issues here compared to what you are in for. Thank you.

Answer 3

Instead of going over there, invite them over to your house. Have a designated smoking area. If they insist on having events at their house because it's the smokers house, them politely tell them that the second hand smoke is affecting your health and you cannot tolerate the smoke and politely decline. Then your husband has to be put in the ackward position of making a choice.

You need to make some sort of compromise now otherwise it'll be extremely problamtic when you get pregnant and have kids.

Answer 4

Non-smokers ALWAYS expect smokers to respect them. How come you cant respect a man who smokes in his own house ? If it bothers you so bad dont go there at all. And putting your dog in a pen when company comes over is nothing like them not smoking when your over. Smoking is an addiction. I dont understand why this doesn't sink into non-smokers brains. Just like the fat girl who cant stop shoving the cookies in her mouth, smokers need to smoke. Get over it already. Isn't it good enough that smokers have virtually no place to smoke but their homes ?? Now you want to b*tch about that too ???????

Answer 5

Second - hand smoking is really dangerous, and people don't realize how it can effect their bodies. My friend is a heavy smoker and I don't smoke so when we go out for lunch she sits opposite to me and she smokes, she blows the cigarette and i feel that I am inhaling the smoke which is worst than smoking in the first place. I think the best thing to do is talk to your BF about this maybe he can help you out since he doesn't smoke as well.

Answer 6

Unfortunately, the entire subject of secondhand smoke resides in an area of discourse heavily laced with activists, who, passionate about their mission of improving public health, far too readily exaggerate the dangers. Moreover, the whole notion of ETS being listed as an indoor air pollutant started in the mid-1980's, as hapless tenants in overpriced windowless high-rise office buildings sought creative means of breaking their leases. No doubt, workers could be irritated by ETS, but then, they could also be irritated by perfume. Indeed, excessive perfume is considered an indoor air pollutant in some quarters, along with cooking odors.


As to the matter of someone being "allergic" to ETS, based on the traditional definition of an allergen being an agent that promotes an immunological response, ETS fails that test, and so far, at least, can only be classified as an irritant. Properly, people are "sensitive" to ETS. But, playing on the well known dangers of smoking, the doom-profiteers have worked many people into a frenzy, by conflating the bad habit of smoking with the much different matter of breathing in secondhand smoke.


Science, at its best, should never have an agenda, and should aid the quest for truth. In the days before big media and big research grants, bizarre claims could be subjected to the harsh light of objective science. Nowadays, though, it is sometimes the alleged "science" that promotes the bizarre claims.


Back in the 1960's, many health agencies proffered a set of two graphs. One tracked the increase in cigarette smoking from 1900-1930, and the other tracked the increased incidence in lung cancer from 1930-1960. That the two graphs could virtually be superimposed was as ringing an indictment of smoking as any gory autopsy picture of a smoker's cancer-ravaged lungs. Contrast this with the paradoxical claim by the Centers for Disease Control a few years ago that passive smoking could explain an increase in asthma over the last decade, even though as asthma was increasing, the number of smokers was decreasing.


So, how dangerous IS secondhand smoke? The most reliable data would indicate that it is nowhere near as serious a threat as elements of the media (and their supporters within academia) would have us believe. In fact, ETS is, at its most extreme, far less dangerous than numerous other indoor air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, toxic mold, and radon.


The biggest study on this topic, covering 39 years, and involving 118,094 adults, with particular focus on 35,561 who never smoked, and had a spouse in the study with known smoking habits, came to this conclusion:


"The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed."


Not surprisingly, considering the non-PC findings, the May, 2003 article detailing the study generated a good deal of hate e-mail on the journal's website.


Several other studies support these results, including one from the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, published back in 1975, when smoking was rampant in bars and other public places. The paper concluded that the concentration of ETS contaminants in these smoky confines was equal to the effects of smoking 0.004 cigarettes per hour. In other words, you would have to hang out for 250 hours to match the effects of smoking one cigarette.


But this issue is controversial, right? Just a few days ago, the trend-setting California Air Resources Board announced results of their draft report, "Proposed Identification of Environmental Tobacco Smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant." The report concludes that women exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke have a 90 percent higher risk of breast cancer. The document also pegs the annual death toll of secondhand smoke at 73,400.


It should be noted that the World Health Organization and other groups that examined the same evidence found no link to breast cancer. Furthermore, the Air Resources Board gives more weight to animal studies, but much epidemiology of suspected human carcinogens indicates that animal data overstates the actual risk.----

Just talk to him..or post it on a answer board I am sure strangers know the situation alot better.

Take care of your own personal buisness....personally.
Dark Stranger

Answer 7

just tell it like it is, it is horrible, I don't let my son go over to my dads place because I don't think it is right he understands, and don't subject your self to the second hand smoke on new years do something else more exciting. No he does not have to not smoke in his own house but maybe he will if you don't go over.

Answer 8

You are right about one thing...it's his house. Your option is to either go or not. There really is no compromise if he chooses not to have one, the ball is in your court.

Answer 9

where a gas mask LOL