VOA慢速英语2015 儿童吸二手烟是虐待儿童行为吗?

Is Secondhand Smoke Child Abuse? 儿童吸二手烟是虐待儿童行为吗?

From VOA Learning English, this is the Health & Lifestyle report.

Doctors have been warning for years that secondhand smoke leads to many types of illness. However, many children around the world live in areas where adults regularly smoke.

A journal called Annals of Family Medicine recently published an article calling for doctors to start treating children's contact with secondhand smoke as abuse. In that case, contact to secondhand smoke would be viewed much like physical abuse or neglect.  

The author of the article is a professor at University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Dr. Adam Goldstein says secondhand smoke causes many diseases in children. These diseases include asthma¹ and pneumonia². He adds that no amount of secondhand smoke is safe.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agree that secondhand smoke can cause serious health problems in children. They say that compared to children who grow up in homes without smokers³, children with parents who smoke have smaller lungs and more illnesses.  

However, several organizations for smokers’ rights in the U.S. say people have the right to smoke in their own homes. These same organizations say that many studies done on the effects of smoking on health, including studies on secondhand smoke, do not use good science.

Fight against tobacco companies

The article about secondhand smoke and children comes at the same time the World Health Organization is increasing calls to fight against tobacco companies.

Dr. Margaret Chan is the director-general of the organization. She says she believes tobacco companies are trying to avoid and even weaken anti-tobacco laws.

Speaking in March at the World Conference on Tobacco or Health in the United Arab Emirates, Dr. Chan warned the fight against tobacco companies is going to be difficult. But, she added, "We should not give up until we make sure the tobacco industry goes out of business."

Other leading public health researchers who spoke⁴ at the conference called for the sale of tobacco to end by 2040.  

A spokesperson for the Altria Group -- which includes Philip Morris, the leading cigarette manufacturer in the U.S. -- did not want to comment on the issue.

Will smoking soon be a thing of the past?

Those who want to see a tobacco-free world wrote about their ideas recently in the British medical journal The Lancet. They say they hope that in thirty years “only five percent of adults around the world will still smoke.”

The lead author of the article is Robert Beaglehole from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Mr. Beaglehole said, "A world where tobacco is out of sight, out of mind, and out of fashion -- yet not prohibited -- is achievable in less than three decades from now.” 

He says such a world will need the full commitment from governments, civil society and international agencies.

Smoking trends around the world

New research released by Kenji Shibuya from the University of Tokyo, Japan and colleagues shows that overall rates of smoking are slowly declining.

However, the use of tobacco is expected to rise over the next few decades in some countries, most notably⁵ in Africa and the Middle East.

The number of smokers is also on the rise in New York City in the United States. Numbers from the New York Department of Health show that in 2013 there were more than one million adult smokers in New York City. That is a 14 percent increase from 2010.

By 2015, researchers expect one billion people to be smokers.

About one billion people are also expected to die from smoking and other forms of tobacco over the next century. Most of these deaths will be in low-to-middle-income countries. 

Words in This Story

secondhand smoke – n. smoke from a cigarette, cigar or pipe that can be inhaled⁶ by people who are near the person who is smoking

asthma – n. medical a physical condition that makes it difficult for someone to breathe

pneumonia – n. medical disease marked by inflammation of the lungs, usually caused by a bacterium⁷, virus, or other infectious agent

commitment – n. a promise to be loyal to someone or something; the attitude of someone who works very hard to do or support something

1 asthma   

n.气喘病，哮喘病

参考例句：

• I think he's having an asthma attack.我想他现在是哮喘病发作了。
• Its presence in allergic asthma is well known.它在过敏性气喘中的存在是大家很熟悉的。

2 pneumonia   

n.肺炎

参考例句：

• Cage was struck with pneumonia in her youth.凯奇年轻时得过肺炎。
• Pneumonia carried him off last week.肺炎上星期夺去了他的生命。

3 smokers   

吸烟者( smoker的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Many smokers who are chemically addicted to nicotine cannot cut down easily. 许多有尼古丁瘾的抽烟人不容易把烟戒掉。
• Chain smokers don't care about the dangers of smoking. 烟鬼似乎不在乎吸烟带来的种种危害。

4 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

5 notably   

adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地

参考例句：

• Many students were absent,notably the monitor.许多学生缺席，特别是连班长也没来。
• A notably short,silver-haired man,he plays basketball with his staff several times a week.他个子明显较为矮小，一头银发，每周都会和他的员工一起打几次篮球。

6 inhaled   

v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. 她合上双眼，深深吸了一口气。
• Janet inhaled sharply when she saw him. 珍妮特看到他时猛地吸了口气。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 bacterium   

n.(pl.)bacteria 细菌

参考例句：

• The bacterium possibly goes in the human body by the mouth.细菌可能通过口进入人体。
• A bacterium is identified as the cause for his duodenal ulcer.一种细菌被断定为造成他十二指肠溃疡的根源。