Children exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes face a higher risk of developing attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, other behavioral problems and learning disorders, a new study finds.
The research doesn't definitively prove that tobacco smoke can harm children's brains, and it doesn't say how much smoke is too much. However, it does add to the evidence that children may be especially vulnerable to the effects of smoke exposure.
"They're in a developmental stage and their body is growing," potentially putting them at greater risk of disruptions to their brains than adults, said study co-author Hillel R. Alpert, a research scientist at Harvard School of Public Health's Center for Global Tobacco Control in Boston.
It's difficult to confirm whether secondhand smoke causes children's health problems because it would be unethical to expose kids to smoke and watch what happens to them. Instead, researchers often must look backward, as they did in this study, and try to eliminate all explanations but one for a link between smoke exposure and illness.
