Secondhand Smoke: The Cause for Kids' Psychiatric Problems?

Photo Credit: Richard Miske

We've been hearing about it for a long time now. Second-hand smoke isn't good for anyone and that no one has a right to force anyone to be an "unwilling smoker" just by virtue of having to walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Businesses and restaurants have new rules about where people may smoke, but they don't seem to have gotten around to a rule about how many feet you have to be away from an entrance to a building to smoke. If you're right outside the entrance smoking, anyone entering the building is forced to "smoke" your discarded puffs.

The July issue of Child Psychiatry and Human Development carried an article which dealt with second-hand smoke in another context - that of children and possible psychological problems. The researchers enlisted 133 women and 171 children, boys mostly, in a study funded by The National Institute of Mental Health, that looked at three situations; one in which there was no prenatal smoke exposure, a second where mothers smoked in their last two trimesters and one where mothers were exposed to second-hand smoke either at work or in the home during the last two trimesters.

The second and third groups' children showed more symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorders than mothers who were in a smoke-free environment. The researchers concluded that the more smoke exposure, the more severe the symptoms in the children.

The culprit in these cases was nicotine, a potent compound that affects brain development in those crucial second and third trimesters of pregnancy. The researchers believe that the nicotine results in overstimulation of the important brain chemical, dopamine. These children may "have colic and are hard to sooth as infants. As toddlers they are overactive and oppositional. Later on they are irritable, inattentive and low on pleasure."

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