Children still being exposed to cigarette smoke by parents

Forty percent of parents allow smoking around children in their home. More than half allow smoking around kids in automobiles, while less than half usually sit in the non-smoking section of restaurants. Families earning less than $41,000 per year were the least likely to take precautions to prevent their children from being exposed to smoke.

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• Too many American parents are ignoring health warnings and letting their children be exposed to cigarette smoke at home, in cars and in public places, a new report finds.
• The phenomenon cut across all ethnicities, the researchers noted, although rates for child exposure to smoke in public places were highest among poor and minority families.
• Scientists have linked tobacco exposure to a variety of ailments in children, including asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia and middle-ear infections.
• Adding to their risk is the fact that children take in more air in relation to their size than adults, noted Dr. Norman H. Edelman, a consultant for scientific affairs at the American Lung Association.
• "They're always getting more toxins into their lungs," Edelman explained, especially because they're more active than their elders.
• In the new study, Pyle and her colleagues surveyed 1,770 parents and guardians of children in New York and New Jersey who visited pediatricians at 15 health clinics.
• "The ideal would be a smoke-free home, and no smoking around the home," Pyle said.
• The results of the survey appear in the spring issue of Families, Systems & Health, a journal of the American Psychological Association.
• The researchers found that 40 percent of parent and guardians allow smoking around children in the home.
• While minority families were less likely than whites to shield children from smoke in public spaces such as trains or restaurants (by opting for nonsmoking areas), in other situations this disparity disappeared or was reversed.
• For example, white parents were actually less likely than black or Hispanic parents to ask other adults to cease smoking in the presence of their children.
• Pyle said the study findings could help education efforts aimed at making smoking unacceptable around children.