Second hand smoke more harmful to kids' health than thought

If you live in New York City, you are treated every couple of weeks to a powerful new television ad highlighting the different ways smoking harms your health. The most visceral ad, the one that really makes my stomach turn, is the one where surgeons remove a piece of plaque build-up from a smoker's artery. Grasping the eggshell-colored gristle with a metal tong, the surgeon's gloved hand wiggles the bloody plaque free and turns it so the camera can get a better shot. That commercial has always hit me in the gut, but the results of a new study give me even more reason to feel sick when I see it: the arterial damage depicted is happening to kids who inhale the second-hand smoke of their parents.

A group of Finnish researchers has found that the health of kids as young as 13 can be seriously harmed: They can develop early signs of hardened and clogged arteries as a result of second-hand smoke exposure. Those kids are also more likely to have other health risk factors, such as for heart disease, the researchers said. The authors of the new study examined 494 children and found that those exposed to secondhand smoke between the ages of 8 and 13 were more likely to show thickening of blood vessel walls, a precursor to hardening and clogging of arteries. The researchers also found that the kids who were exposed to the most tobacco smoke had higher levels of apolipoprotein B, which contributes to "bad" cholesterol, another heart disease risk factor. The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

"Although previous research has found that passive smoke may be harmful for blood vessels among adults, we did not know until this study that these specific effects also happen among children and adolescents," study author Dr. Katariina Kallio, research fellow at the Research Center of Applied and Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine at Finland's University of Turku, said in a news release from the American Heart Association. "These findings suggest that children should not face exposure to tobacco smoke at all," Kallio said.

It's been known for some time that children living in homes with smokers face greater health risks for allergies and asthma, but this is the first time I've heard of evidence showing risk for vascular damage in kids as well. And that to me is actually scarier. As an ex-smoker myself, I've read plenty of research that suggests the lungs have the admirable ability to heal themselves and become healthy after enduring the abuse of smoking. Whew. But the blood vessels aren't quite so flexible - a fact which played a significant role in my decision to embrace health and put cigarettes down for good three years ago. When I read that each nicotine molecule acts like a little razor blade, slicing and dicing its way through my arteries and leaving behind a trail of scars that invite hardening and clogging, I was done. Overall, it wasn't that hard of a choice, though quitting a pack a day habit wasn't a walk in the park.

At least I had the option of choosing health - something not available to kids who live in homes with smokers. What's the right solution to protect the health of these children? How do we balance the individual rights of smokers with the need to shield children? And is it fair to come down harder on parents who are smokers compared to parents who feed their kids an ocean of trans fats, which also wreak havoc on arteries?

What do you think?

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