Second-hand smoke is a 'killer at large'

As many as 540 million Chinese are exposed to second-hand smoke (SHS), of which 180 million are under the age of 15, says a national tobacco control report released yesterday.

Women and children are most vulnerable to SHS with the smoking rate among men reaching 57 percent. What's worse, a whopping 90 percent of the women are exposed to SHS at home.

The number of smokers in China has reached about 350 million, the highest in the world. And about 100,000 of the 1 million Chinese who die due to smoking-related diseases each year are passive smokers, says the report.