Quote Originally Posted by Arthur Little View Post
... she's your ex-wife now ... and, hopefully, each of your two kids grew into normal, healthy adults - none the worse of the (often "unexplained") childhood asthma attacks that, for some equally inexplicable reason, have been known to afflict the offspring of many, many *parents - neither of *whom had ever put a cigarette to their lips.

Let me cite an example:

My own late first wife - a lifelong non-smoker - was born into a household where no one smoked ... yet suffered chronic asthmatic attacks during early adolescence.

Doctors and ENT Specialists of the time [circa early 1950s] were baffled for a while ... until one of them suggested her symptoms might be linked to some form of nervous reaction - possibly stemming from the fact that it was unusual to find a 12-year-old coping with numerous domestic duties on top of her schoolwork - because her mother suffered from acute rheumatoid arthritis ... which eventually left the latter very badly crippled and unable to perform the most basic household tasks.
I can see that point but its pretty obvious, in hindsight, that the two went hand in glove. And now my daughter is 30 yo, she knows herself what the cause was.

I also know that from personal experience, if I am in a room full of cigarette smoke, on a bad day it affects my breathing too!

I would like to turn the "alright Jack" comment around and say that for many smokers it can be a case of "I am alright Jack" with little regard for the consequences of their habit on others.

Some of us are a little wiser now and realise that smoking is not only harmful to ourselves but also harmful to those within the smokers vicinity. For others it is a case of don't know or don't care or both.