I have seen a lot of recent news articles about secondhand smoke and the effects it has on children’s health. We all know that secondhand smoke had bad health effects on people, but it should be no surprise that the effects are more serious on children than on adults. There have been plenty of studies that links secondhand smoke with respiratory problems, SIDS, asthma, middle ear infections, and other physical problems. But the link between secondhand smoke and mental problems have never been closely examined. .. until recently.
The study found that the kids that were exposed to secondhand smoke had high levels of cotinine in their blood. On average they found that:
- the kids had almost five symptoms of major depressive disorder
- almost four symptoms of ADHD
- almost three symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder
- more than one symptom of conduct disorder
It was determined that the higher levels of cotinine in the blood were strongly linked with ADHD symptoms, but weakly linked with the symptoms of major depressive disorder, conduct disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. Overall, the positive links between cotinine and mental problems were greater for boys than girls.
Secondhand smoke exposure to children is a major public health problem. As a public health major, this is something that bothers me, because it can be prevented, it doesn’t need to happen. I think that there should be limitations as to where people can smoke (I know that there are many laws already restricting smoking in many public areas, but I think they should be more strict and make it so that they cannot smoke around children, especially parents). I do not know how they would regulate this, but it would help end this problem.
