A recent study of 20,000 children confirmed that smoking just isn't good for kids. I don't know why this should come as a surprise to anybody, but I thought I should post it just in case....
The effects of smoking during pregnancy last up to age 12, while exposure to cigarette smoking after birth further worsens lung function, Dr. Manfred A. Neuberger of the Medical University in Vienna, one of the study's authors, told Reuters Health.It is difficult to tell, Neuberger noted, whether the impairment of lung function resulting from prenatal and early life exposure is permanent, given that many individuals with parents and siblings who smoke will have started smoking themselves by their teen years.
Somebody with an epi background might want to pick this one apart, but in the meantime the press release is interesting. Send it to your favorite ardent-second-hand-smoke-is-harmless friends.
More like this
Because there can never be enough research to illustrate the positive impact of public health policy on people’s health, here’s another one. This one found that comprehensive smoke-free indoor air laws resulted in a lower risk of asthma symptoms and fewer asthma-related doctor’s visits.
Half of us in the US now live in cities, towns or states that ban smoking in public places, including restaurants and bars (it's nice to be more enlightened than Europe in at least a few things):
We sometimes treat them like second-class citizens. Or do we? Certainly smokers hate it when we force them out into the cold for a butt. Here in Michigan, we're thinking about restricting smoking in a lot of public places.
These days, pretty much everyone, smokers included, knows that smoking is bad for you. It promotes lung cancer (and several other varieties of cancer as well), heart disease, emphysema, and a number of other health problems.
I don't think it would be that hard to put together a reasonable study comparing non-smoking to smoking children of smokers. It's true that many children of smokers themselves smoked (I'm a case in point) but many children of smokers are also comitted non-smokers (my wife & her brother haranged their parents for smoking -- my mother would have throttled my sister and me had we flushed a carton of her smokes -- still would for that matter.)