Certain U.S. researchers have suggested that people with pets may be stimulated to give up smoking in order to spare their pets from second-hand smoke.
A number of people participating to a survey said they would definitely make an effort to stop smoking or at least consider it, if this would save their pets from damage caused by passive smoking.
Sixteen to twenty six percent of pet owners living with someone, who smoked, while they did not, said they would convince their partners to stop or at least invite them to smoke outside. There are no actual figures to show how many dogs and cats die due to complications of second hand smoking.
An expert from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit thought that this might be an original and convincing incentive to persuade smokers to stop, for over seventy million people in the United States who own pets are smokers, while less than 20 million people actually smoke.
Passive smoking is also damaging to health, and researchers have proven that it can cause allergies, breathing problems; skin and eye infections and can increase the probability of lung cancer.
This survey does not intend to emphasize that smokers are not concerned with their own health and that of the people in their family, this reason is just employed as a different motivation to help smokers stop smoking.
