Tips for living with passive smoking
This is response to my previous post about children being more perceptible to health problems after living in a passive smoking environment.
I’m about to move out with my girlfriend next week which will be great, no more passive smoking for her. Her parents are a couple of chimneys which smoke in the house. It’ll be interesting to see whether her health improves as i’m sure the smoke causes some minor breathing problems. She’s been exposed to this for 24 years which isn’t great and the statistic that children have three times more chance of getting lung cancer later on in life scares me (and also makes me angry).
Advice for anyone living with smokers
Avoidance. Quite simply avoid the rooms they’re smoking in. This isn’t always very easy especially as in my case it was my mother/father in law to be’s house.
Put windows on the latch. A bit of respectful compromise goes a long way. Since we started dating i’d always be walking into the lounge and putting a window ajar. I would normally get berated for doing it but it helps.
Open doors. If all else fails make sure you at least stop the room you’re in from being closed completely off. The gas chamber effect i call it. Try to keep at least one door open. It makes a big difference. Down side being that it will fill the rest of house with smoke, but if you have to stay in the same room as the smokers it’s unbearable unless you do. Ventilate, ventilate, ventilate! Of course when you leave the room it’s more than acceptable to close the door of that room 
hehe.
Ionisers. These mysterious gadgets some how clear the smoke from the room. My girlfriend’s had a ioniser slaving away in her room since we started dating. Hard to say whether it actually does the job but it’s nice to think that it is. Although after a month or so the grime that builds up on them must mean they do something! Keep it clean as the metal pin that emits the ions soon builds up with dust.
Wear old clothes. It’s not just the health related aspect that’s the problem but the social one too. Smelling like an ashtray isn’t pleasant so wearing older clothes means you change into your cleaner garms at later point. Don’t go the extra length of wearing a smoking jacket.. that will take the biscuit!
Direct concern. Don’t nag the smokers in the room to give up it’ll get you nowhere and just leads to arguments. But a friendly “any more thoughts on giving up?” every now and again is worth a punt.
Leaflets. Any leaflets you might find down the NHS are worth placing around the house. Don’t be too blatant.
Hide their ciggies. A bit extreme but hell it’d work!
If anyone has an other suggestions please pop them in a comment. I’d love to hear them.
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[...] March, this year, i wrote the post about how to put up with passive smoking. It was also around this time that me and T moved out together to our first rented property. Apart [...]
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