Effects of passive smoking on children health

Abstract EN

Smoking is the single greatest avoidable cause of disease and death.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.1 billion people worldwide regularly smoke tobacco products and smoking accounts for 10,000 deaths per day due to the effect of smoke on the body.

Nonsmokers are at risk because of inhalation of passive smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS).

Exposure to passive smoking (ETS) is harmful to the health of the general population and particularly hazardous to children.

Passive smoking exposure causes disease and premature death in children and in adults who do not smoke.

Researchers found significant dose-dependent associations between passive smoking and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stroke, ischemic heart disease, and all forms of cancer, and all respiratory and circulatory diseases.1 the home is the place where children are most exposed to second hand smoke; where they spend much of their early life in the presence of their parents.

Every day more than 15 million children are exposed to smoke in their homes.

Children are especially sensitive to the effects, due to the fact that their bodies are still growing and developing and they breathe faster than adults and therefore may inhale more smoke.

Children who live in homes where parents smoke have high levels (more than five times) of cotinine (a biological marker of secondhand smoke exposure) than children who have nonsmoking parents2.

Also children with childhood ETS exposure were more likely to become smokers in adolescent or in adulthood.3, 4.