Environmental Tobacco Smoke Tobacco smoking has long been recognized as a major cause of death and disease, responsible for an estimated 434,000 deaths per year in the United States. After the Environmental Protection Agency and the Surgeon General stated that cigarettes cause lung cancer there was a tremendous movement to make cigarettes illegal. Now the debate is on environmental tobacco smoke also known as secondhand smoke, passive smoking, and sidestream smoke. The worry is that when non-smokers are exposed to secondhand smoke they face the same health hazards as smokers. Tobacco smoke