Secondhand smoke damages babies' lungs

In unprecedented biochemical and anatomical detail, researchers at the University of California, Davis, have described how cigarette smoke damages the lungs of unborn and newborn children.

The findings illustrate with increased urgency the dangers that smokers' families and friends face, and should give pediatricians helpful new insight into the precise hidden physical changes occurring in their young patients' lungs, maintains Kent Pinkerton, a professor for the Center for Health and the Environment.

"Smoke exposure causes significant damage and lasting consequences in newborns," he insists. "This research has a message for every parent: Do not smoke or breathe secondhand smoke while you are pregnant. Do not let your children breathe secondhand smoke after they are born."

Pinkerton adds that the results from this study are further proof that secondhand smoke's effects on kids are not minor, temporary, or reversible. "This is the missed message about secondhand smoke and children," he stresses. "Parents need to understand that these effects will not go away. If children do not grow healthy lungs when they are supposed to, they will likely never recover. The process is not forgiving and the children are not going to be able to make up this loss later in life."

The 2006 Surgeon General's Report on second-hand smoke estimates that more than 126,000,000 residents of the U.S. age three or older are exposed to secondhand smoke. Among children younger than 18 years of age, an estimated 22% are exposed to secondhand smoke in their home.

What the researchers found is that environmental tobacco smoke wreaks havoc in babies at a critical time in the development of lungs--when millions of tiny cells called alveoli are being formed. "If you are killing cells at a higher rate during a critical development stage, when they are supposed to be proliferating in order to create new alveoli, the lungs may never be able to recover," Pinkerton asserts.

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