Passive Smoking Increases Risk of ADHD in Kids

A new investigation shows that exposure to passive (secondhand) smoking can lead to higher risk of developing learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children.

The research effort focused on kids in households where one or both parents smoked. What the experts were interested in was whether any statistically-significant differences existed in the risks these kids had of developing the aforementioned conditions versus the risk levels their peers were subjected to.

Using funds provided by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the investigators were able to determine that the risk was indeed twice larger for kids in the former group.

A worrying discovery was that more than 5 million children in the United States – the equivalent of more than 6 percent of all kids aged 1 to 11 – are exposed to tobacco or cigarette smoke at home daily.

The new study covered data about more than 50,000 children, ages 11 and younger, which were collected during a national survey conducted back in 2007. The investigation was led by experts at the Harvard School of Public Health.

In a paper published in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Pediatrics, the team reports that kids in households where parents smoked suffered from learning disabilities (8.2 percent), ADHD (6 percent), and some other type of conduct disorder in 3.6 percent of all cases.

Conducting such research is tremendously important for public health and healthcare budgets, since treating mental disorders of learning disabilities in children alone costs more than $9.2 billion per year in the United States, PsychCentral reports.

For a single child diagnosed with such issues, parents pay an estimated $14,000 per year. As such, any sort of progress made in understanding and treating this spectrum of disorders could lead to considerable savings for parents, the healthcare system and the economy.

Where the new study failed was in establishing a causal relationship between exposure to tobacco and the development of learning disabilities or ADHD. But the team says that the new work indicates possible avenues for future research, as well as public policy changes.

“Assuming a causal relationship, 274,100 excess cases of these disorders could have been prevented had the children not been exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes,” they write in the journal entry.