Women are aware of the risks of smoking during pregnancy, but now there is clear evidence that the habit can also create cardio-vascular problems for their children.
Even by the age of 5, the walls of the carotid artery (that delivers oxygenated blood to the head and neck) thicken and become more rigid, finds a new study, reported on in the LA Times by Jeannine Stein.
Researchers at the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, Utrecht, Netherlands, found that children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy had significantly thicker and more rigid artery walls; when the father also smoked, arterial changes were even more pronounced. However, children whose parents did not smoke during pregnancy but did so afterwards had no significant changes to their arterial walls, pinpointing the gestational period as the crucial time when most of the damage occurs.
In the study, led by Caroline C. Geerts M.D., researchers concluded:
"...tobacco smoke exposure during gestation has structural and functional effects on the vascular wall of young children. In view of the early origins of cardiovascular disease, preventive measures against smoking should be specifically directed at the gestational period."
The study included 259 children who participated in the Wheezing Illnesses Study Leidsche Rijn (WHISTLER)-Cardio study, a birth cohort study started in 2000 to examine factors in wheezing illnesses such as asthma susceptibility and toxin exposure; for this study researchers followed one birth cohort up to 5 years old. Parents completed initial questionnaires about smoking habits and at 5 years old, children underwent ultrasonographic measurements of the carotid artery to check for vascular disease. In addition, parental smoking data were also updated.
The study will be published in January's edition of Pediatrics.
Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.
A major problem with this article, and the research, is that nothing tells us just what was being smoked.
Was it plain tobacco?
Was it tobacco contaminated with residues of any of 450 registered tobacco pesticides, with dioxin-producing chlorine pesticides and bleached paper, with PO-210 radiation from still legal use of certain phosphate fertilizers, and with any of over 1000 untested, often toxic non-tobacco additives?
Or was it Fake Tobacco made, in Patented Ways, from all kinds of industrial waste cellulose?
That is...to conclude that tobacco causes certain harms to children is jumping the gun, at best, or outright fraudulent research conducted in service of the cigarette industry and suppliers of its non-tobacco adulterants....and their insurers, investors, and "friends" in government positions.
Posted by: Baja K | 01/02/2012 at 04:20 PM