5 minutes of exposure = smoking a cigarette...
Five minutes exposure to secondhand smoke stiffens the aorta as much as smoking a cigarette.

20 minutes of exposure = smoking a pack a day...
Twenty minutes of breathing secondhand smoke activates blood platelets involved in the clotting process as much as smoking does in pack-a-day smokers. This increases the chances of heart attack.

30 minutes of exposure = stiffened, clogged arteries...
A non-smoker’s coronary arteries can dilate and boost flow to heart muscle better than a smoker’s. After half an hour of secondhand smoke exposure, a non-smoker’s arteries lose the ability to dilate to the same extent as a pack-a-day smoker’s. Thirty minutes exposure also compromises the ability of your blood to manage LDL (“bad”) cholesterol.

2 hours of exposure = greater risk of irregular heartbeat...
Breathing secondhand smoke can speed up your heart rate and reduce “heart rate variability”—small, random variations in heartbeat. Reductions in heart rate variability signal problems in the nervous system’s control of the heart, increasing the chance of an irregular heart beat (arrhythmia) that can itself be fatal or trigger a heart attack.

These health effects can take as long as 48 hours to reverse themselves. All of these effects increase the long term risks of developing heart disease and increase the immediate risk of heart attack. Measures to protect the health of citizens by restricting exposure to secondhand smoke reduce the risk of heart attacks, asthma and other respiratory illness.

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