Second-hand Smoke and Children. A Review of the Health Effects

      Аннотация: More than half of the children globally (approximately 700 million) has been estimated by the World Health Organisation to be exposed to passive smoking by the approximately 1.2 billion adults who smokes. However, majority of second-hand smoke (SHS) occurs at home and parents or carers are the major sources. Thus, this book is aimed at exploring contemporary evidence on the health effects of SHS exposure in infants and children. At the end of this research, the authors’ hopes the information would help identify ways in which Government expenditures on treatments attributed to SHS exposure in infants and children can be reduced. A systematic search of literature was employed, retrieving a total of 17 articles which met the search criteria. These were however modeled into 4 themes, which detailed the cardiovascular effects, respiratory effects, immune effects and neurobiological effects of SHS in infants and children. The weight of evidence put together from the 17 reviewed articles showed SHS to not only have adverse negative clinical outcomes across different body systems in infants and children, but also long-term clinical outcomes such as emphysema and lung cancer.

Ключевые слова: cardiovascular diseases, Children, Environmental Tobacco Smoke, Health Effects, infants, Passive smoking, respiratory diseases, Second-hand smoke, maternal smoking, parental smoking