An estimated ten million people have already given up smoking in the UK, but every year 35 workers die from exposure to second hand smoke in the North-East alone. Bride-to-be Julia Breen enlists the help of the National Health Service to see if she can break her seven-year habit before walking down the aisle.

IN the days before we realised puffing little sticks of tobacco would kill you, stylised Hollywood movies would show a screen siren such as Audrey Hepburn holding an elegant cigarette holder in her satin-gloved hand, blowing dainty little smoke rings in the air.

Sultry, suave and beautiful, those vintage scenes meant post-war Britain was almost entirely covered in a cloud of tobacco smoke, as people emulated their cinema heroes. Haven't times changed?

In 1950, everybody smoked. Now, rather than sitting in a sophisticated cocktail bar, casually dragging on a cigarette holder, most smokers can be seen in little covens, huddled against the rain and biting wind, like witches around a cauldron. Light up a cigarette in a restaurant and the looks you get from the next table are pretty poisonous.

Serious consideration is being given to banning smoking in pubs, and most workplaces have now scrapped their smoking rooms.

As a child, I hated smoking, but at the age of 19, I suddenly realised, to my horror, that I had succumbed. It just crept up on me. One day I was practically an anti-smoking campaigner, the next I was outside York University library, puffing on a Marlboro Light. I couldn't get the nicotine into my system fast enough. I think it was studying philosophy. You needed regular breaks to keep you sane and smoking filled in the gaps nicely between Socrates and Descartes.

I kept meaning to give up, but as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The crunch came when my fianc, who I am due to marry in five weeks, said he wouldn't go through with the wedding until I gave up. I started having dreams about setting my wedding dress on fire, and of walking up the aisle, beautiful music playing, guests smiling, one hand slipped under my dad's arm - the other hand clutching a smoking Marlboro Light.

After one particular nicotine nightmare, I went for help to Darcy Brown, the smoking cessation officer at Darlington Primary Care Trust, who had been recommended by a colleague. He will see me every week, prescribe me nicotine replacement therapy, and keep driving the message home that I must give up.

Darcy knows everything about smoking, and has seen what it can do. Some of the people he sees smoke 120 cigarettes a day - more expensive than a heroin habit.

"It's good you're trying to give up now, while you have a choice," he says. "Some people I see have no choice - they either give up, or they'll be dead by Christmas."

He listens to my concerns, takes a carbon monoxide reading, which is higher than I thought it would be, and prescribes patches. Within 24 hours of not smoking, he assures me, my blood oxygen levels will return to normal, carbon monoxide will leave the body and my lungs will start clearing out the debris of seven years of smoking. After three days I will find breathing easier and energy levels will increase.

For an hour, Darcy has me enthralled. He tells me that cigarettes are laced with arsenic, cyanide and an ingredient which goes in nail polish remover. There are 4,000 chemicals in a cigarette, and the tobacco companies fill cigarettes with a special ingredient to stop the smoke being thick and black, which it would be otherwise.

"If you were sitting across from your friend in the pub and you couldn't see them because of the black smoke, you would probably not smoke at all," says Darcy. "It's the tobacco companies' way of making sure you smoke."

He says that every time you smoke, you cook the back of your throat at about 400 degrees Celsius. The soft tissue in your throat actually roasts, like a joint of meat in your oven, but even hotter. I wasn't sure whether that made me want to give up smoking or become a vegetarian.

As a smoker, he said, I was taking in so much carbon monoxide that I lacked about 20 per cent of the oxygen in my blood, meaning my circulation was dreadful, because the heart has to work harder to push the blood around the body.

A couple of weekly meetings later, and apart from two lapses (yes, I know that's rubbish), I'm smoke free. Come my wedding day, I hope to be a fragrant, smoke-free bride, not only without a cigarette in my hand but without even wanting one. It's not easy, but it's a lot easier than I thought it would be.

I have a long way to go before I'm a non-smoker, but the novelty of not stinking of smoke hasn't worn off yet. I can actually taste my food, and even run a bit further than normal on the treadmill.

Last month, Smoke Free North-East warned that second-hand smoke was becoming the 21st century's biggest hidden industrial disease. Over two million people in the UK are regularly exposed to tobacco smoke in the workplace and every year 35 workers die from exposure to second-hand smoke in the North-East alone.

The resulting conditions, including emphysema, bronchitis, asthma, lung and heart disease are now the biggest industrial diseases of the 21st century.

Second hand smoke from the end of a cigarette is higher in toxins than exhaled smoke and 85 per cent of second-hand smoke is in the form of invisible gases, causing people to underestimate their level of exposure. Within 30 minutes, second hand smoke reduces a non-smoker's blood flow to the same level as that of a smoker, the British Medical Journal claimed last year.

Ailsa Rutter, who heads up Smoke Free North-East, says: "Many people don't realise that every year second-hand smoke in workplaces kills three times more people than die in industrial accidents. It is a little recognised but very worrying fact that has, as yet, not been fully addressed.

"Hospitality workers in pubs and bars are amongst those most at risk, and there are currently no effective means of protection for them. Smoke is, over extended periods of time, as deadly as asbestos and yet you would never see a bar worker dressed head-to-toe in industrial safety clothing. Their health should be as much a priority as the health of our factory and office workers and we're here to make sure everyone has a safe and healthy environment in which to work."

And if all that doesn't make me want to give up, I just remember that smoking can make you look up to 20 years older, with a croaky voice, crows' feet, yellow, sallow skin and deep ageing lines. If vanity can't make me give up, nothing can.

* For more information about giving up call the NHS Smoking Helpline on 0800-169 0169.