Secondhand Smoke and Children

You probably know secondhand smoke isn't good for your kids, but do you know what can happen when your kids are exposed to it? Respiratory disease, SIDS and asthma might come to mind. But new research shows psychological disorders-like ADHD-are also more common in children who are exposed to secondhand smoke. Are your kids exposed to secondhand smoke on a regular base? What do you think of this research?
FROM CNN: Doctors have been telling people for years that cigarette smoke can be harmful not just to smokers, but to those around them. Now two new studies point to how secondhand smoke can affect children's behavior. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, approximately five-and-a-half million kids live in households in which someone smokes.
Previous studies have shown that secondhand smoke exposure in kids can cause respiratory diseases, SIDS, and higher rates of asthma. Now two new studies in this week's edition of Pediatrics, find secondhand smoke appears to have a big affect on the way youngsters behave. Investigators from Harvard and the tobacco free research institute in Dublin, Ireland, found that children exposed to secondhand smoke, had a fifty-percent greater chance of having one or more childhood psychological disorders, compared with kids who were not exposed to secondhand smoke.
Those disorders included both ADD and ADHD. And in a different study that looked at secondhand smoke sensitivity in teens, researchers from a number of American Medical Schools found - not surprisingly - that adolescents who reported smoke to be unpleasant when they smelled it, were less likely to take up smoking than those teens who were not bothered by smoke.
Researchers noted that most of those pre-teens who found smoke to be objectionable had not been exposed to secondhand smoke when they were younger.
-NewsAnchorMom Jen