Protecting Children from Secondhand
Smoke
No one should be forced to breathe secondhand tobacco
smoke. It harms everyone who breathes it. It harms children
more than most adults because their bodies are growing very
quickly and they breathe faster than adults. Breathing
secondhand smoke causes many inner ear infections, surgery
to place tubes in their ears because of those infections,
asthma cases, respiratory problems, cancer, Sudden Infant
Death Syndrome (SIDS) and many other medical problems.
Because children have very little control over their
environment (where they live and where they go in public)
society needs to protect them from unknowing or uncaring
parents and other adults who may take them into dangerous
places. Unsafe places for children include any building
where smoking is allowed. It takes at least two weeks for
the tobacco smoke in a building to leave it completely.
As children’s bodies grow, they are searching for
building blocks to build new bones, muscles, brain cells
and everything else in their quickly growing bodies. Some
toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke “look like”
other things like calcium, so they are added to
children’s bodies and can cause problems in them for
the rest of their lives. One example is that breast cancer
rates are higher in women who breathed secondhand smoke
when they were younger.