The findings, released by the World Health Organisation on Tuesday, are from a tobacco survey conducted in China in 2010 by the centers for disease control and prevention in China, the United States and the WHO.

Around 100,000 people die from exposure to second-hand smoke in China each year, in addition to an estimated 1 million people who die from direct tobacco consumption.

Women in rural areas of China were more affected, with almost 3 in every 4 exposed to second-hand smoke at home, compared to just over half in urban areas.

“There is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke. Creating 100 percent smoke-free environments is the only way to protect people from the harmful effects of second-hand tobacco smoke,” said Michael O’Leary, WHO representative in China.

“Tobacco use and second-hand smoke exposure in reproductive-aged women can cause adverse reproductive health outcomes, such as pregnancy complications, fetal growth restriction, preterm delivery, stillbirths, and infant death.”

About a quarter of China’s 1.3 billion people are smokers, or about as many people as there are in the United States. But the country is gradually becoming more aware of this public health problem.

The Ministry of Health warned in May that more than 3 million Chinese would die of smoking-related illnesses annually by 2050 if nothing is done to curb this habit.

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Researchers from the University of Athens, the Hellenic Cancer Society and the Harvard School of Public Health had 15 healthy study participants go inside a chamber meant to simulate a bar or car filled with secondhand smoke particulates for 20 minutes to see how their breathing was impaired.

In just that short amount of time, air flow through the participants’ airways was impeded.

“The observed short-term effects of secondhand smoke tell us that even a short exposure is indeed harmful for normal airways,” study researcher Dr. Panagiotis Behrakis, M.D., FCCP, of the University of Athens, said in a statement.

The new findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians; because the study has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, findings should be regarded as preliminary.

Similarly, a study published in 2007 in the American Journal of Public Healthshowed that cancer-causing NNK — a compound that comes from the smoke of cigarettes — builds up by 6 percent every hour in bar- and restaurant-workers who are exposed to secondhand smoke during their night shifts, TIME reported.

“We were somewhat surprised by the immediacy of the effect and the fact that we could measure the average hourly increase,” study researcher Michael Stark, principal investigator at the Mulmomah County Health Department in Oregon, told TIME.

Earlier this year, a study in theAmerican Journal of Public Healthshowed just how many lives secondhand smoke claims in the U.S. each year: 42,000, Livescience reported.

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