MASSACHUSETTS HEALTH OFFICIALS were worried about the effects of breathing second-hand cigarette smoke in stuffy railway cars, so they asked Massachusetts Institute of Technology to investigate. MIT’s conclusions, outlined in a letter from Professor William Ripley Nichols, were unambiguous:
“The products of the tobacco consumed mix with the air and render it oppressive to most nonsmokers…A very little tobacco smoke does indeed affect the eyes and throat of a person unaccustomed to its use, but our senses are often affected by quantities too small to weigh, too small even to detect by chemical means.”
That report was prepared 114 years ago. The only change since then has been a dramatic improvement in the means of measuring the chemical constituents of tobacco smoke and of weighing their deadly effects.
Using techniques that measure down to parts per billion, scientists now know that so-called passive smoke contains carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, polycyclic-aromatic hydrocarbons, nicotine, inhalable particles and hundreds of other dangerous compounds. It also contains about 50 chemicals, such as benzene, which are known or suspected to cause cancer.

And researchers suspect carbon monoxide, ammonia, benzene and other toxins may be present in higher concentrations in passive smoke than in what a smoker inhales, which has been burned at higher temperatures that destroy some of the pollutants. In a 1986 report, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said there is evidence “sidestream smoke may be more carcinogenic.”

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How does your family handle the disagreements that occur in your household? Conflicts are basic to human relationships; they are inevitable and should not be avoided. However, family members should know how to negotiate and resolve these conflicts. To negotiate, parents and children both need to make a genuine attempt to understand the attitudes, feelings, and desires of one another. When disagreements are resolved successfully, family life is enhanced and relationships are strengthened.
Some families cannot seem to settle conflicts. Family members may deny that problems exist. Or they may draw a third person into the conflict, supposedly to mediate the difficulty, but who instead may take a position on one side or the other and thereby make the disagreement worse. Sometimes when they are unable to resolve their conflict, the warring parties may join together to focus attention on another family member as a way to avoid dealing with the real problem.

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