I find it surprising to find continued studies on secondhand smoke (SHS), sometimes referred to as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). It seems like every study that comes out says the exact same thing. But perhaps there are still people out there who feel SHS is just a tool used to infringe on the rights of smokers in public places. It truly baffles the mind.
Okay, with that said...a recent study in the Revista Portuguesa de Pneumologia [Jan;17(1):20-26] looked at ETS exposure on school age kids. They wanted to see if they had higher prevalency rates for respiratory diseases and symptoms (aka: respiratory morbidity). They looked at pre-natal maternal smoking and post-natal ETS exposure. They also observed the socioeconomic indicators to see what they might find. The study enrolled 313 kids from 4 public schools in Lisbon. The researchers stayed with the first and fourth grade classes. Okay, any guesses what they found?
"Well I'll be!" (to quote Gomer Pyle). Constant and others found that smoking exposure was bad for the kids. Wow, isn't this an amazing discovery? Okay, maybe not so much.
Roughly 41% of the homes had ETS exposure. This broke down as follows:
Maternal pre-natal smoking 18%
Maternal post-natal smoking 32%
Paternal smoking 38%
Children whose mothers smoked during their pregnancy and had both parents continue to smoke afterwards, had a higher incidence of wheezing. Children with a smoking Mom had a more frequent cough. All these results were significant.
Now, the researchers were not able to find any greater incidence of respiratory infections or asthma in children as a direct result of the child's parent's smoking status.
Interestingly, the smoking Dads had a lower education level and were in a less qualified occupation than the non-smoking fathers. This has also been born out in the literature, that smoking is a syndrome of the lesser educated. No offense intended, but rather just a well studied, no bones about it, scientific fact.
So how does this affect the everyday smoker? Well, don't smoke if you're pregnant and don't smoke around your kids, your nephews/nieces, or anyone else's kids for that matter. A better option though, would be to use this as a primary motivator to help you quit. There you go, if you were looking for one more reason to stop smoking, we just gave you one.
