Smoking Inside Home Can Make Your Child Frequently Ill: New Study
Smoking is bad for the health, we always knew that but it gets to children sooner than we thought. According to new research being presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2016 Meeting, children who live with a smoker or have exposure to tobacco smoke within the confines of the home become frequently ill and end up in the hospital more often than those not exposed to tobacco smoke.
The research entitled, “Tobacco Smoke Exposure and Health Care Utilization among Children Nationwide,” studied the statistics presented from 2011-2012 by the National Survey on Children’s Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. They looked at patterns of health care utilization among children ranging in age from newborn to 17-years-old children, living with smokers and compared with those who not exposed to tobacco smoke at home.
The results revealed a total of 24 percent of the 95,677 children in the study, corresponding to a weighted total of 17.6 million children across the US, lived with smokers, researchers said. About 5% of the children lived with someone who smokes inside the home, equivalent to a weighted sum of 3.6 million US children.
Researchers said that children who lived with a smoker or who had exposure to tobacco smoke inside the home were significantly more likely to have had any medical care visit, including sick care. At the same time, researchers said, they were considerably less likely to have had any dental care visits.
“Our findings indicate that tobacco smoke exposure has a significant impact on demand for health care services,” said lead author Ashley Merianos from the University of Cincinnati.
“Settings with a high volume of children exposed to tobacco smoke at home, including pediatric emergency departments, could serve as effective outlets for health messages to inform caregivers about the dangers of smoking around children and help decrease these potentially preventable tobacco smoke exposure-related visits and associated costs,” Merianos added.