Official: 500 million endangered by passive smoking

There were more than 500 million passive smokers and 300 million smokers in China, currently, representing around 33.3 percent of the smokers across the world, said Yi Li, vice minister of the Ministry of Health recently.

Smoking may cause various kinds of diseases. Data shows that nearly 1 million patients dies of smoking-related diseases in China every year, representing 12 percent of the total deaths, which surpassed the total death number of deaths by AIDS, tuberculosis, traffic accidents and suicides.

By Li Mu, People's Daily Online