Sharrow Community Forum

Shipshape is helping people to make their homes and cars smoke free.

A smokefree home is a home where nobody smokes inside, including visitors. Making your home and car smokefree is the best way to protect your children's and pet's health.

Did you know...

• Children and babies exposed to tobacco smoke in the home and car inhale the equivalent of 60-150 cigarettes a year.
• Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 harmful chemicals, over 50 of which are known to cause cancer.
• 90% of these chemicals stick to the walls, clothes, furniture, hair and skin for up to 2 weeks.
• In the case of pets, these chemicals will stick to their fur and skin, which could be swallowed when they clean themselves. It could even lead to severe allergic reactions, causing scratching, biting or chewing of their skin.

Shipshape is working to support families to make their homes smokefree, and to give their children the best start in life.

This means smoking outside.

Smoking near an open window, or under an extractor fan doesn't get rid of the harmful chemicals. Keeping the smoke outside will immediately reduce the risk to your family of many health problems, including the following:

• Asthma
• Chest infections, e.g. bronchitis & pneumonia
• Coughing and wheezing
• Ear infections
• Meningitis
• Cot Death
• Heart Disease

There will be other unexpected benefits to this: your children will be less likely to miss valuable education time at school, and less likely to need hospital care.

There will also be a reduced risk of fire in your home: fires caused by smoking kill more people than any other kind of fire.

How can we help?

We know it can be difficult requesting visiting family and friends to smoke outside. Shipshape is ready with some tips to get around those difficult questions.

We are also working with South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service to provide free fire safety checks and a free fire alarm for your home: if you are interested then drop in to Shipshape for more information.

Shipshape and Sheffield are keen to know how many people are deciding to go smoke free in their homes. You can sign a Smokefree Home Pledge today. This helps us to know how many children and families are being protected.

There is also a lot more information, advice and support available from Shipshape, so come along and talk to us about it today.

Finally...

We understand that not all smokers will want to quit straight away...

But if and when you are ready, we will be ready to support you all the way. Taking that first step is not as hard as you may think!

Back to the Stop Smoking Support page -->