Exposing children to cigarette smoke may increase their risk of developing lung disease in the future, The American Cancer Society find in a new study.
Researchers are monitoring more than 70,000 adults who have never smoked for the past 22 years. At the start of the study, the participants were asked if they were living in a house with a smoker and children. Those who are living with both were 31 percent more likely to die of the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This is the first-ever study that found the association between the two.
“We know that children exposed to second-hand smoke are more likely to have lung problems, asthma,” says Ryan Diver, the director of data analysis at the American Cancer Society and lead author of the study.
The COPD mortality rate may increase, contributing to about seven additional deaths per year for every 100,000 participants. The good news is that researchers do not find an association with cancer or heart disease, said Michael Eriksen, a former director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health and was not part of the study.
“We need to be aware of the effects of second-hand smoke; they appear to be long-lasting. We need to continue to reduce our exposure of it,” Diver said. According to him, many people in the study were born in the 1920s and ‘30s.
As per the Surgeon General, secondhand smoke is defined as both smoke by a burning cigarette and the smoke exhaled by smokers.
“Whether you are young or old, healthy or sick, secondhand smoke is dangerous,” the surgeon general's report said, “no amount of secondhand smoke is safe.”
Eriksen points out the most important part of the study. He said that: “childhood exposure to second-hand smoke increased the risk of death from COPD as an adult. That hadn’t been established before.” Majority of secondhand smoke studies look at the immediate effects on children or adults.
Over the past decades, smoking habits have changed. The exposure to second-hand smoke declined in the United States in the 1980s. This is mainly because of the efforts of the public health to change rules governing smoking in public areas.
“Your parents didn’t intend to put you at risk. That was the culture, the norm, back then,” says Eriksen. “For parents, the implication is don't smoke at home, and don't smoke around your kids.”