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GABZ asked "What evidence of harmful effects of SHS other than to those with pre-existing conditions?????"

Asthmatic kids' lungs react fast to 2nd-hand smoke

Last Updated: 2003-03-12 12:00:18 -0400 (Reuters Health)

DENVER (Reuters Health) - Children with asthma have worse lung function just a day after being exposed to second-hand smoke, according to a new study by Colorado researchers.

But when parents don't smoke at home or in the family car, the effect of smoke on their child's lungs is less severe, noted Dr. Nathan Rabinovitch of the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver.

"The good news is that keeping the smoke outside the home makes a difference, although children will still get some tobacco exposure," he told Reuters Health. Rabinovitch presented the findings here this week at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology's annual meeting.

He studied the effects of second-hand smoke by recruiting 40 schoolchildren with moderate to severe asthma and observing them over a four-month period.

Children wore a small, portable monitor that measured tiny airborne particles to gauge their second-hand smoke exposure. Their lung function was tested twice daily, at which time the filters in the monitors were weighed to gauge smoke exposure.

Rabinovitch and his colleagues found that children living with smokers were exposed to more airborne particles than were kids from non-smoking households.

But when parents only smoked outside of the house, their children were exposed to 30 percent fewer particles than were children whose parents smoked indoors.

On the day after the exposure, a child's lung function was lower in proportion to the amount of second-hand smoke he or she had inhaled. The investigators documented no such changes in the children in non-smoking households.

These findings show that banishing smoke from the house may decrease asthma severity in children whose family members smoke, Rabinovitch said.

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In other words, nothing that is proof of causation, as opposed to correlation..........

I have never claimed smoking is a healthly habit, and have never encouraged anyone to take it up - but I've read all the studies that have been made public and have at least read the abstract of the the most conclusive one that is being supressed because it proves that exposure to SHS is not harmful in the way the antis wish it to be.

Reaction to SHS smoke because of a pre-existing condition is not any kind of proof that SHS causes anything.

I go back to my original premise - if you don't want to be around it, don't go where you know it is permitted and don't blame the smokers for your negligence of taking your children to where it is permitted.

I got a call last month from the school nurse because my daughter was complaining about an earache.....I didn't get a call out of some SOP, I got the call because it is so unusual for my daughter to be sick at all. A quick dental exam solved the problem - a popcorn skin caught up in the gum.

It's a sad thing that a child that has been exposed to SHS is so healthy, isn't it? I wonder how I made it to 43 or my husband made it to 49.........and in perfect health.

According to the experts we both should have been dead before we even bothered to start a family, so would his parents and my parents.