Effects of parental smoking and indoor tobacco smoke exposure on respiratory outcomes in children

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 4311
• Main Authors: Zhuge, Yang, Qian, Hua, Zheng, Xiaohong, Huang, Chen, Zhang, Yinping, Li, Baizhan, Zhao, Zhuohui, Deng, Qihong, Yang, Xu, Sun, Yuexia, Zhang, Xin, Sundell, Jan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 09.03.2020; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 692/499; 692/700/478; 704/172/4081; Air Pollution, Indoor - adverse effects; Child; Child Health - trends; Child, Preschool; Children; China - epidemiology; Common cold; Cough; Cross-Sectional Studies; Croup; Environmental effects; Environmental Exposure - adverse effects; Exposure; Female; Health risk assessment; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Infant; Male; multidisciplinary; Odor; Odors; Passive smoking; Pneumonia; Pregnancy; Prenatal experience; Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects - epidemiology; Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects - etiology; Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects - pathology; Prevalence; Respiratory Tract Diseases - epidemiology; Respiratory Tract Diseases - etiology; Respiratory Tract Diseases - pathology; Risk Factors; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Smoke; Smoking; Tobacco; Tobacco smoke; Tobacco Smoke Pollution - adverse effects; Tobacco Smoking - adverse effects; China
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-60700-4

The extensive literature has reported adverse effects on environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) on children’s health. We aim to analyze associations of ETS with dry night cough, croup, pneumonia, and frequent common cold and to disentangle the effects of prenatal, infancy and childhood exposure by multilevel logistic regression. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 41,176 children aged 3–8 years in 8 major cities of China during 2010–2011, and obtained demographic information, smoke exposure information, and respiratory outcomes. Parents’ smoking habit and indoor tobacco smoke odor were considered as two indicators of ETS. The prevalences of respiratory outcomes were 6.0% for croup, 9.5% for frequency common cold, 17.1% for dry night cough and 32.3% for pneumonia respectively in the study. The associations between respiratory outcomes and parental smoking were not obvious, while indoor tobacco smoke odor was clearly and strongly associated with most respiratory outcomes, with adjusted odds ratios ranging from 1.06 to 1.95. Both infancy and childhood exposure to tobacco smoke odor were independent risk factors, but infancy exposure had a higher risk. The results explore that ETS increased the risk of respiratory outcomes in children, highlighting the need for raising awareness about the detrimental effects of tobacco smoke exposure.