「No Smoking, Please !」呢篇文應該點寫先可以突出d?

Passive smoking may harm infants from birth

Significant levels of nicotine and carcinogenic compounds have been found in babies as young as three months, raising fears that some children are being harmed by passive cigarette smoking from birth.
The team that conducted the study of the youngest infants ever to be tested for signs of inhaling smoke said such exposure to nicotine could increase the chances of a child becoming addicted later in life. Other compounds raised the risk of the child developing smoking-related cancers, including lung, bladder, mouth, liver, kidney and pancreas.

“The take-home message is that parents should not smoke around their children, because they will suffer from the exposure,” said Stephen Hecht of the University of Minnesota cancer centre.

The team measured exposure by testing urine samples from 144 children aged three months to a year in smoking families. Their mothers were aged 18 to 48 and 82% were daily smokers.

Tests showed that 98% of the babies had nicotine in their urine, with 93% testing positive for cotinine, a breakdown product produced when nicotine enters the body. The tests also revealed that 47% had significant levels of a chemical called NNAL, a cancer-causing compound produced when the body processes NNK, a chemical specific to cigarette smoke.

Babies tested positive for NNAL when family members smoked an average of 76 cigarettes a week when the child was present. The levels were typically between 1% and 5% of those found in smokers, although one child in the study had NNAL levels comparable to a smoker’s.

“Persistent exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in childhood could be related to cancer later in life,” said Dr Hecht, whose study appears in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention today. Aggressive advertising campaigns and tougher taxation were needed to encourage smokers to quit.

According to a study in the British Medical Journal last year, passive smoking may kill 30 people every day in the UK. The report added that passive smoking at home might account for 2,700 deaths among 20 to 64-year-olds each year and 8,000 among the over-65s. A child born into a home shared with smokers has a 25% greater risk of developing lung cancer.

John Britton, chairman of the tobacco advisory group at the Royal College of Physicians, said that even though the levels of carcinogens detected in the infants were low, they were still a concern.

“There are no safe levels for carcinogens - the greater your exposure, the higher your risk of developing cancer. So someone born into a home where people smoke is going to have a higher risk of developing all the cancers smokers are at risk from,” he said. “Most passive smoking happens in the home and we need ways of addressing that, and the best way is to strongly encourage people to quit.”

煙味趕客 常離崗位

目前，英國不少電腦、會計等公司已引入這一禁令，即使應徵者保證在工作時間內不吸煙也不會獲得通融。在伯明翰聘請了 400名職員的軟件公司 Kalamazoo-UCS是其中之一，它在網站上列明「只聘請不吸煙人士」。

位於倫敦的網站設計公司 BouncingFish，則不想一個前僱員因吸煙而虛耗工時的事件重演，而決定向煙民「說不」。公司負責人尼恩表示，該名僱員每隔半小時便要跑離座位解煙癮，「這會影響他的工作，而且他的煙癮也為客戶帶來不便」。

出版商 Woeckel在招聘員工時，要求每名應徵者詳細談論他們對吸煙壞處的看法，只有證明自己不是煙民的應徵者才有機會獲聘。公司一旦發現某個員工是煙民，馬上便會解僱。

招聘公司求職顧問卡特指出，雖然對煙民關上求職大門的公司仍屬少數，但卻有增加趨勢，「這是由於公眾對健康問題的認知與警惕都加強」，同時也受美國紐約與愛爾蘭都柏林等城市實施公眾場所禁煙政策影響。

拒絕招聘煙民在英國並不違法。加拿大卑斯省把煙民列入「殘疾人士」之列，以保護他們免受歧視，英國雖然也有禁止殘疾歧視的條例，但卻不包括煙民。

英國煙民可循 1998年頒布的人權法案控告僱主，該法案規定個人的「私人及家庭生活必須獲得尊重」。但律師索薩表示，煙民獲勝的機會很低，因為「沒有一條法例真正明文規定僱主不可歧視煙民」。

煙民組織「林野」（ Forest）則指摘反吸煙潮流對煙民不公平。主席克拉克稱﹕「為什麼人們即使僅在公餘時間吸煙，也不能獲得工作﹖接下來會怎麼樣﹖『瘦削人士優先』﹖『只聘請不肥胖人士』﹖ 」

魔豆網路資訊有限公司( www.modoo.com.tw )0939-001575

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可能只是一張名片或是一個LOGO，卻是企業給外界的第一印象。
好或不好，在0.1秒的剎那就決定了。

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