Earlier in the day, we had reported about the harmful effects of smoking waterpipe tobacco. Smoking it appears is not only gravely injurious to the health of the person smoking but also people or children around him. A study claims that predominantly hair nicotine concentrations were seen more in children exposed to secondhand smoke at home.
The younger the child, apparently more the concentration with the same intensity of secondhand smoke contact at home. Study authors from Johns Hopkins University apparently support the World Health Initiative’s efforts for a prohibition in home smoking.
Sungroul Kim, Ph.D., a research associate at the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, commented, “This study provides adequate evidence to support home smoking bans, particularly in homes with small children.â€
Kim and colleagues supposedly applied hair nicotine concentrations as a biomarker of secondhand smoke contact, since it seemed to be not much affected by daily exposure difference as opposed to the occurrence of nicotine in other body fluid samples.
Around 1,284 children from about 31 countries in Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East were encompassed in the study.
Among the houses with elevated nicotine concentrations in the indoor air i.e. more than 10 mg/m3 as opposed to less than 0.01 mg/m3, women appeared to have thrice the intensity of hair nicotine concentrations. Children apparently had 6.8-fold augment in hair nicotine concentrations.
In addition, children who were younger than 6 years old had about 12 percent elevated intensity of nicotine concentration as opposed to those who were elder. Those who stayed more than 19 hours a day at home apparently had 15 percent more levels of nicotine concentration in their hair as compared to those who spent less than 19 hours a day at home post altering other explanatory variables.
The results were published in the Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.