Environmental Tobacco and Asthma
Does environmental tobacco smoke increase the risk of asthma in children?
Smoking is observed as a common habit among uncountable number of people belonging to various countries of the world. It is expected that the number of smokers will rise in the near future because of attractive marketing campaigns run by tobacco companies. There was a time when only men were habitual to smoking. In the modern 21st century, youngsters and girls are also exposed to the thrills of smoking. People love to smoke despite knowing about its detrimental effects.
It is interesting to mention that smoking kills not only the smokers but also the ones who hate it. It is an interesting study that non-smokers are subject to all harmful effects of smoking just because they are present in the environment where people smoke.
There is significant relationship between passive smoking and disease and mortality among children. Since their systems are delicate and immunity is weak, they are the most vulnerable members of society who can encounter the unfavourable influence of smoke hat is present in the environment. They breathe in polluted air at multiple places including their homes and schools, public places like restaurants, special resorts like child care settings etc.
Introduction
There is nothing more hazardous among children's environmental exposure than the fact that they breathe in the air which is not clean and contaminated because of tobacco smoke. There is a huge pile of researches, articles and literature available showing links between prenatal maternal smokings, children's environment tobacco smoke exposure and decreased lung growth, increasing malfunction of respiratory systems and other problems related to asthma. These problems may be severe for the individuals if their exposure to smoky environment is high
There has been a rapid rise in the number of asthma cases in the Western societies. Though the reasons for asthma vary, but exposure to tobacco constituents continues to be the most common reason. In the United States, it is reported that the allergic diseases can be ranked as one of the major factors causing chronic diseases which affect approximately 17% people and the healthcare system bears approximately 18 billion USD cost per annum. Children suffering from asthma also have certain sort of allergies and they are involved in respiratory issues that are often the basic reason behind reversible airflow obstruction and chronic lung inflammation. It is also possible that asthma diagnosed in adults is more often non-allergic in nature.
This paper casts light on environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and its exposure to individuals which becomes the major cause of asthma among young children. The population under consideration for this paper is particularly the young children, who are supposed to be more prone to these risks.
Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Asthma
Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) -- or passive smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke -- can be defined as the exposure of a non-smoking person to tobacco constituents from smoking by others.
Since the start of 1980s, many research studies have been conducted to identify the significant relationship between parental smoking, the likelihood to develop asthma and other related respiratory system issues.
A research study demonstrated that for the children living in inner parts of the city are more prone to dangerous effects of environmental tobacco. This is the reason, asthma is more commonly found among these children. The research highlights many points which are responsible for development of asthma in young kids. One of these reasons is the presence of smoker at homes where the children live. In other words, if any of family members is habitual to smoking, the likelihood of asthma increases. It must be considered with caution that the healthcare institutes and the developers of other intervention programs usually ignore this aspect and focus on other reasons of asthma. However, this point must also be considered (Kattan, et al., 1997).
Another study conducted by tested the urine cotinine levels of 199 children to find the links between exposures to environment smoke caused by tobacco in young kids. The median urine cotinine levels of 116 children were found as 5.6 ng per millilitre. It was noticed that many children are victims of asthma because of smoking habits of mother or other persons. The more the exposure was to the environment tobacco smoke; the increased acute exacerbations of asthma were reported. These exposures were either reported by the parents or were found through the urine cotinine levels. Measurement of urine cotinine levels from this study further assisted in collection of proof...
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