A recent debate on another Angeles Facebook group, about passive smoking in Angeles City bars prompted me to find out the real facts about this issue. In particular, i wanted to find out the following:
1) What is the equivalent amount of cigarettes you would have to smoke to get the same amount of negative health effects as exposure to pollution in an average day in Angeles City, not including passive smoking.
2) What is the equivalent amount of cigarettes you would have to smoke to get the same negative health effects as spending one hour in a smoke filled bar in Angeles.
First I downloaded an App called Sh***t I Smoke and put in my location. The app uses the accepted equivalence of 22ug/m3 of PH25 equaling 1 cigarette. Unfortunately the app could only get measurements for Manila - giving an answer of 2.3 cigarettes per day. Comparing levels of pollution in Angeles to Manila, I calculate that the average pollution, indoors, away from busy roads or heavy industry, in Angeles would be the equivalent of 1 - 1.5 cigarette per day.
Now lets take accepted equivalence levels for passive smoking. The generally accepted figure is that one hour in a smoke-filled room is the equivalent of smoking 1 cigarette.
Therefore, assuming that you are out in the bars for 3 hours, you will be exposed to the equivalent of 3 cigarettes due to passive smoking and 1.25 cigarettes due to pollution.
To translate all this into lost days of your life, every time you spend 3 hours in a smokey bar you take 33 minutes off your life.
The conclusion: 3 hours in smokey bars causes more than double the damage as a whole day in Angeles City.
Please feel free to challenge these figures WITH FACTS, related to smoking and pollution, not on other subjects!
