Homes and Cars Press Releases

Kids in Smoke-Filled Homes and Cars: It's Shocking!

CONTACT:
Paul McIntyre or
Anne Naughton
(916) 780-0226
Immediate Release: March 8, 2002

Small toys that can accidentally be swallowed, exposed electrical sockets, household chemicals and germs from dirty hands are everlasting concerns for parents protecting their children. But the largest and most deadly threat to a child's health and safety goes essentially unnoticed - secondhand tobacco smoke.

Secondhand smoke, the combination of the smoke exhaled from a smoker's lungs and the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, cigar or pipe, contains more than 4,000 hazardous poisons including formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, ammonia, lead and arsenic. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified secondhand smoke as a Group A carcinogen - a known cause of cancer in humans.

By contrast, if a child were living in an asbestos filled home, the problem would be eliminated immediately. Yet everyday, millions of children are exposed to secondhand smoke, a chemical that kills more people each year than asbestos ever did. Aren't the 43 carcinogens in secondhand smoke a health and safety issue too?

The number of Americans killed each year by murder, illegal drugs and AIDS combined, does not even come close to the 53,000 non-smokers that will die from SHS exposure. And still, more than 1.1 million children in California alone continue to be exposed to this dangerous poison.

In California, where smoking has been banned in workplaces since 1995, the most dangerous secondhand smoke environment that remains is in the home and car.

This is not just a comfort issue, or a matter of how one prefers the air to smell. Kids who grow up in homes and cars where parents smoke suffer from numerous serious health risks.

Children who are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke have as a result, four times higher rates of bronchitis, pneumonia and other respiratory infections, as well as higher rates of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and needing tubes in their ears. These kids also suffer from limited lung development and capacity, and a greater chance of acquiring cancer later in life.

More severe asthma, higher rates of school absenteeism, and reduced ability to absorb essential nutrients like Vitamin C, are also a result of exposure to secondhand smoke.

Exposing children to secondhand smoke should be considered just as shocking, if not more so, than allowing them to play with a light socket, easily swallowed toys or in a pile of germs. The home and car are private environments that should not be regulated, however, parents need to know that when kids are present, smoking in not an option. For more information on this subject, visit www.kiiss.org.

By: Anne Naughton, Project Director of Kids Involuntarily Inhaling Secondhand Smoke (KIISS), a nonprofit organization that works to reduce children's exposure to secondhand smoke and its multiple health risks.