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Rated: E · Article · Health · #1415836
My 1st article for my school's newspaper. An editorial: the hazards of smoking in school.
Note: The name of any persons and the high school are marked out. There will be a clear indictation of where the specific names were.

A Smokey Grave

How the Bathrooms at (name of high school here) Are Killing Non-Smokers


  "Life is a Beach" may be the theme for the girls' second-floor bathroom, but that is not how it smells. The aroma wafting through the bathroom stalls is sadly not salty sea air, but congested, foul smoke.
  Secret smokers of (high school) daily go into the bathrooms and pollute the air with their second-hand smoke with no teachers to check the situation. Now, if one chooses to smoke, by all means, ruin your lungs and heart on your own time. However, it is outrageous to pollute non-smokers' lungs like those that must enter the school's bathrooms when nature calls.
  Second-hand smoke, according to www.everybody.co.nz, can cause many horrible symptoms for non-smokers, including: coughing, sore throats, dizziness, eye watering, and nausea. For the poor souls with asthma, a decrease in lung function could occur.
  "Just 30 minutes of exposure (of second-hand smoke) is enough to reduce blood flow to the heart," says the helpful website. Now, most are not going to be spending half an hour in the bathroom, but time daily adds up.
  "As little as five minutes of exposure to second-hand smoke can stiffen the aorta, making the heart work harder to pump blood," the site continues to say.
  Not only are smokers polluting the school's bathrooms, but also they are taking up the stalls, making people late to class. When an innocent person wishes to just use the restroom and continue to class, they find there is a three-minute wait in a line as the smokers take up the stalls sucking down a cigarette.
  There are two options for this life-or-death problem. Choice A: (High school), get some amazing vents. However, the better choice: Smokers, keep your smoke and cigarettes at home where they belong. The fogged up bathrooms need to end so that the rest of us can breathe happily in a clean bathroom.     
Alexa Dawson

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