Ways to protect your children
1. Avoid Indoor Air Pollution -- Keep Children Away
from Tobacco Smoke.
Any prolonged exposure to tobacco smoke can harm a child.
Children breathe faster and inhale deeper than adults so they
absorb a higher proportion of the dangerous cancer-causing
chemicals than adults. Their lungs are growing rapidly, which
makes them extra sensitive to those same cancer-causing chemicals.
The U.S. EPA has concluded that “exposure to second-hand
smoke can cause lung cancer in adults that do not smoke.”5
Exposure to second-hand smoke early in life can create lifelong
health issues including pneumonia, bronchitis, ear infections,
cancer, asthma, and other breathing difficulties.
Steps You Can Take:
• Quit smoking. If you smoke, quit
now to avoid exposing your children to dangerous chemicals
and to decrease the likelihood that they will one day choose
to smoke. Children model adult behavior and a child who has
a parent who smokes is much more likely to smoke themselves.
Even if you are not smoking near a child, often your clothes,
car, and hair absorb the toxins from cigarettes. While you
may not be smoking next to the child, the child could be breathing
in the fumes of smoke that have permeated other objects.
• Ensure that others who spend time with your
children do not smoke. Smoking is not safer if a
grandparent, favorite aunt or uncle, or family friend is the
one smoking. Secondhand smoke is dangerous to children no
matter who is smoking.
• Avoid restaurants that permit smoking.
Tobacco smoke does not confine itself to the smoking section
of restaurant. It permeates throughout the building. The Berks
County Council on Chemical Abuse publishes a Smoke Free Dining
Guide that lists nearly 200 smoke-free restaurants. It is
available online at www.councilonchemicalabuse.org or by calling
610-376-8669.
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5 U.S. EPA: www.epa.gov/smokefree/healtheffects.html
