Babies Get More Than Secondhand Smoke

(WebMD)  The chemical traces of cigarette smoke may show up in babies of parents who smoke, according to a new study.

The study shows that cotinine, a chemical released when the body breaks down nicotine, is more abundant in urine samples from smokers' babies than from nonsmokers' children.

It's not clear how cotinine levels affect babies, but exposure to tobacco smoke isn't healthy, note the researchers, who included Mike Wailoo, M.D., FRCP, a senior lecturer in the child health department of England's University of Leicester.

Wailoo and colleagues analyzed urine samples from 104 babies who were about 10-12 weeks old.
Most of the babies — 68% — had at least one parent who smoked cigarettes. Overall, 62% of the babies had mothers and fathers who smoked. Eighteen percent only had a mother who smoked. The remaining 20% only had a father who smoked. Those parents smoked 16 cigarettes per day, on average.

The babies of parents who smoked had cotinine levels that were more than five times higher than babies of nonsmoking parents.

Maternal smoking had the biggest effect, quadrupling the babies' cotinine levels. Paternal smoking nearly doubled the babies' cotinine levels.

"Our findings clearly show that by accumulating cotinine, babies become heavy passive smokers secondary to the active smoking of parents," write the researchers.

They note that it's up to parents to decide not to smoke around their children. "The well-recognized maternal desire to protect the child is the great hope for the future," Wailoo's team writes.


By Miranda Hitti
Reviewed by Louise Chang, M.D.
> © 2007, WebMD Inc. All rights reserved

[seer999]

This is just bad science, as many cigarette "research" papers are. So babies of smokers have an increase in continine in their urine; what does that mean? There is nothing in the research that shows that minute amounts of this nicotine breakdown product is harmful or even significant. It has become the "in thing" to jump on the antismoking bandwagon. This, unfortunately has resulted in a rash of research projects which receive a great deal of press, but in actuality don't prove anything. A reasearch project can be designed to show any conclussion it wants, if indeed that is the goal of the project. Example: every person who died in New York state in 2006 had drank water from the state. Conclussion: the drinking water in New York state is obviously dangerous. Obviously this is simplified, but the same principle can be appied to any research project. Unfortunately, the interpretation by scientists is often omitted from press releases.
So,you ask, what's with this guy. Is he pro smoking. No, and yes. What I am is pro freedom of choice. Once we vilify any issue, be it smoking, or religion, or fatty foods, or obesity, or lack of exercise, or sexual preference, or an idea, we move ourselves and our society to the brink of a very slippery slope. It is hard to move back from that edge, and what awaits at the bottom is something our founding fathers built this country to escape.