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Secondhand smoke ruins your health for life
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
The health risk to children who were exposed to tobacco smoke in childhood persists not only in childhood but also in their future life, regardless of whether the person subsequently began to smoke or not.
The scientists used data on 3,805 Americans living in 1,655 homes who took part in the Tucson Epidemiological Study of Airway Obstructive Disease, which began in 1972, writes the online publication Kompyulenta. Every 2 years until 1996, respondents filled out questionnaires that asked questions about their health.
For today's study, the researchers looked at 371 participants (who were children at the start of the study) and analyzed whether they had active asthma, wheezing, cough, and chronic cough (the latter lasting about three months in a row).
Based on the information obtained, the subjects were divided into 4 categories: those who had never complained about the symptoms of the above-mentioned illnesses, those who did not have them in childhood but had them at least once in adulthood, those who had alternating symptoms (at least once in childhood and never in adulthood), those who had manifestations of the disease both in childhood and in later years of life.
The results showed that about 52.3% of children were simply forced to inhale the "aroma" of parental tobacco smoke from the day they were born until they reached the age of 15. After taking into account gender, age, duration of observation and personal addiction to tobacco, it turned out that passive smoking in childhood has a direct relationship with several persistent respiratory symptoms, including wheezing, cough and chronic cough.
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