Teenagers exposed to less secondhand smoking
Hardly any teenagers are breathing in secondhand smoke while riding in cars, as efforts continue to limit youth exposure to the potential harms of tobacco, a nationwide survey found.
The authors recommend that more parts of the country ban smoking while there's any kids in the car.
In the survey they did of middle school and high school students, close to one thirds of them said that in the past week they have been driven in a car in which someone was smoking.
Researchers said," Parents and other drivers may not realize that even when the windows are down, smoking in a vehicle can create toxic levels of circulating smoke."
Dr. Ana Navas-Acien, who has studied secondhand smoke in cars at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said, "The concentrations just get very high -- they get as high as in a very, very smoky bar."
"It's important for children, definitely, but it's a problem for everybody. Even for smokers' own health, it's really important for them to realize that they should not smoke in such a small, confined space," Navas-Acien told Reuters who wasn't involved in the new study.
Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that four state already have banned smoking in cars carrying kids younger than 13-18. Arkansas, California, Louisiana and Maine are the only four in the United States, and Puerto Rico also bars the practice.
Navas-Acien agreed with the authors that extending those laws to more of the country is necessary to protect kids from health problems linked to secondhand smoke.
In the new study, Brian King and his colleagues of the CDC analyzed data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey, took part nationwide in more than 20,000 kids from 6th grade to 12th grade.
The student were asked if in the past week they were in a car when someone was smoking and if they also asked if they smoked themselves.
By 2009, almost nine in every ten youth said they didn't smoke.
The number of participants who reported being out in the open to secondhand smoke in the car went down from 48% to 30% overall.
The rate among smokers went down from 82% to 76%, and non-smokers from 39% to 23%.
The study was published on Monday in the journal of Pediatrics. The declines may be due to more smoke-free laws and fewer people smoking in the United States, plus a change in the public attitude about the appropriateness of smoking near kids.
Researchers agreed that more needs to be done.
"The alarming fact of it is, there's about one in five (non-smoking kids) that are still exposed in this environment. We have evidence that there's no safe level for exposure to secondhand smoke," King told Reuters Health.
Geoffrey Fong a tobacco researcher from the University of Waterloo in Canada who didn't participate in the new research, "People are recognizing the importance of protecting children in cars, and that the amount of tobacco smoke in cars reaches levels that are quite high. Most provinces in Canada have also passed laws prohibiting smoking while young ones are in the car. I envision that we are going to be seeing these kinds of laws passed throughout North America and throughout the world. It makes sense."
"Smoking in cars constitutes a significant public health hazard -- that's quite intuitive."