|
Homes and Cars Related News
Protecting Kids from Secondhand Smoke at Home May Reduce Breathing Problems from Colds
Published: November 15, 2001
Protecting
children from secondhand smoke may reduce breathing problems associated with
colds, a new study published by the American Lung Association
suggests.
Parents who don't smoke at home may also reduce the risk that
their child will end up in the emergency room with an attack of wheezing, the
researchers found.
The results add to the growing body of evidence
linking secondhand smoke at home with increased breathing problems in
school-aged children, the researchers say.
The study appears in the
January issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care
Medicine, published by the American Lung Association.
The study of
11,534 elementary school children throughout the United States and Canada found
that kids currently exposed to secondhand smoke at home were 70 percent more
likely to have wheezing with colds, 60 percent more likely to go to the
emergency room for wheezing, and 40 percent more likely to have persistent
wheezing compared with kids in homes without secondhand smoke. The results
suggest that more than 20 percent of both wheezing with colds and hospital emergency
room visits for wheeze among children in the study group may have been due to
current exposure to secondhand smoke in the home, the authors
concluded.
"This study suggests that children may be at risk of having
more severe respiratory infections if they're exposed to secondhand smoke in
the home," said George T. O'Connor, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at
the Boston University School of Medicine, an author of the study.
"We
found a dose-response relationship in the study -- that is, the more cigarettes
smoked in the home, the higher the rates of wheezing in children," said Douglas
W. Dockery, Ph.D. of the Harvard School of Public Health, another study
author.
More than two-thirds of the children in the study (68.5 percent) were
reported to have been exposed to secondhand smoke at home at some time in their
lives, and half were exposed to it at home at the time of the study.
One-quarter of the children were exposed to two or more smokers at home, and
13 percent of children lived in homes where it was estimated that more than 30
cigarettes were smoked every day.
|