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Secondhand Smoke and Kids
September 29, 2008 |
Many physicians share the same, strong opinion when it comes to smoking and
cigarettes. Dr. Thomas Schiller is a pediatrician with Lee Memorial Health
System. He says, “I wish cigarettes never existed and I fight it all day long.”
He adds that many parents put up a fight when the topic turns to quitting
smoking. “It’s a topic of most denial and I think I spend a lot of energy
talking to parents on this. They are very important and need to be around for
their child later in life.”
While many parents know what affects smoking will have on their bodies they may
not realize the affects it will likely have on their children. “When one parent
smokes in the household the risk of many things goes up about four times and
this would include the risk of being hospitalized for asthma or pneumonia.
Secondhand smoke will cause a child’s immune system not to work as well,
particularly with colds,” says Dr. Schiller.
And even if you think you’re taking steps to protect your children from
breathing in your cigarette smoke, Dr. Schiller says that’s probably not enough.
“They think rolling down the windows in the car is fine…ugh ugh. They’re still
getting lots of smoke; you can measure it in their urine. You think you can shut
the door and smoke on the other side of the house, that smoke that you’ve
exhaled from your cigarette gets sucked into the central air and it gets
processed and shipped over to the other room and they breathe it later on.”
Children can even experience negative health affects after simply visiting the
house of a cigarette smoker. And if just one parent smokes in the home, the risk
of a child developing lung cancer as an adult increases by about four times. |
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