Children's exposure to secondhand smoke in England has dropped 80 percent since 1998
/A new study Published in journal Addiction found that in England, children's exposure to second-hand smoke has declined by ~ 80% since 1998. New social norm in England has led to adoption of smoke-free homes not only when parents are non-smokers but also when they smoke.
% of children living in a home reported to be smoke-free increased from 63% in 1998 to 87.3% in 2012. Researchers gathered data from over 35,000 children who participated in the annual Health Survey for England (HSE) from 1998 to 2012.
Exposure to second-hand smoke was measured through the presence of cotinine in saliva samples. The body converts nicotine from inhaling tobacco smoke into cotinine and it stays in the body much longer than nicotine.
In the late 1980s, the concentration of cotinine in the saliva of non-smoking children averaged 0.96 ng/ml
- 1998, down to 0.52 ng/ml
- 2012, down to 0.11 ng/ml
In 2010, the UK government national tobacco control plan stated that they wanted two-thirds of households with smoking parents to go smoke-free by 2020. They already have seen over half of smoking parent homes go smoke free. If this continues, target goal for protecting children from second-hand smoke will be reached before 2012.
Each year, second hand smoke is responsible for the following in the US:
- estimated 42,000 deaths from heart disease in people who are current non-smokers
- ~ 7,000 lung cancer deaths in non-smoking adults
- Worse asthma and asthma-related problems in up to 1 million asthmatic children
- Between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in children under 18 months of age, with 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations each year
- Costs of extra medical care, illness, and death caused by SHS are over $10 billion per year.