Secondhand Smoke
Secondhand smoke, an irritant, is actually a mixture of the smoke produced by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar, and the smoke exhaled by smokers. Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke, has more that 4,000 substances that can cause major health problems including cancer.
Secondhand smoke can not only trigger asthma attacks but make asthma symptoms more severe. Exposure to secondhand smoke also has been related to new cases of asthma in children who have not previously shown symptoms.
Nearly one in three children under the age of eighteen years lived in families with at least one smoker, according to the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). In the Environmental Protection Agency's National Survey on Environmental Management of Asthma, children with asthma appeared to have more exposure to secondhand smoke than children without asthma. Parents were responsible for about 90 percent of those children's exposure to secondhand smoke.
Question?
Is it okay to smoke in an area when children are not present? Remember to keep your child away from tobacco smoke: Do not allow family and friends to smoke anywhere inside your home or motor vehicles — even when your child is not there. While smoke can be very irritating in an enclosed area, its odor can be trapped, for instance, in a home or vehicle's upholstery or carpeting for a long time. This secondhand smoke could then continue to trigger asthma symptoms.
Even outdoors, an individual sitting a few feet from a lit cigarette can be exposed for short periods of time to substantial levels of contaminated air — compared with normal background air pollution levels, some researchers have noted.
Recent studies also have found that asthmatic children of different races may show different susceptibility to the toxic ingredients in tobacco smoke. In one study, African American children with asthma who were exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke reportedly had significantly higher amounts of cotinine, a byproduct of nicotine, in their bodies.
