Smoke outdoors if you want to have a Healthy Family

Men who became fathers have to smoke outdoors not in the home if they want to protect the health of their families, suggested a new research from Korea. Dr. Moon-Woo Seong of the National Center in Goyang and his colleagues found that newborns whose fathers had smoked in the home had higher levels of nicotine in their hair than babies born to non-smoking dads. They also found that infants whose fathers smoked, but only on open-air, had no more nicotine in their hair than babies whose fathers did not smoke at all.

Researchers reported in the latest study that none of the mothers in the study were smokers, or were regularly exposed to second-hand smoke outside the home. In 27 families they found that neither parent smoked, in 27 families fathers only smoked outdoors, and in 9 families the father smoked indoors. Seong and his colleagues also reported that mothers living with smokers had significantly more nicotine in their hair, but there were no significant difference between nicotine levels in the hair of babies with non-smoking fathers and those with smoking fathers.

But when the researchers looked separately at indoor and outdoor smoking, they found that the highest nicotine level is in the children of indoor smokers compared to outdoor smokers. Looking at average nicotine levels, researchers noted that the wife of an indoor smoker is exposed to 7.4 percent of all of the smoke her husband consumes, while 16.7 percent of the smoke a mother inhales is passed to her fetus.

This research once again showed to smokers that paternal smoking inside the home leads to significant fetal and maternal exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.