Passive smoking during pregnancy
Smoking during pregnancy is absolutely taboo for almost every mother. However, the dangers of passive smoking are often underestimated. Here you can find out how inhaling cigarette smoke harms your child and what you can do to protect them.
Passive smoking is a danger that is sometimes not so easy to avoid. Especially if your partner or other family members smoke, this is extremely harmful for you and your unborn child as well as for babies and children. For adults, six hours of secondhand smoke is equivalent to smoking two cigarettes. This value is correspondingly higher for children and babies because their bodies are much smaller. If a child grows up in a smoking household, it could theoretically smoke several cigarettes a day itself – the negative effect on health would be the same. Around 200 small children die every year in Germany as a result of passive smoking.
Cold smoke is also dangerous
In principle, there should be no smoking in a household in which children live. If you or another family member still cannot give up the nicotine addiction, you should only smoke on the balcony or outside. Because even if you thoroughly ventilate a room where you smoked, many chemical components remain in the air. Cigarette smoke penetrates furniture, carpets and even walls. These also release the dangerous toxins long after the cigarette has been extinguished.
Passive smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of
- miscarriages
- premature births
- placenta detachment
- Present placenta
- Premature rupture of membranes
- low birth weight and small size of the baby
- Malformations of the brain, lungs and other organs
- Birth defects, physical and psychological long-term effects
- sudden infant death
Children from smoking households have an increased risk of
- respiratory problems
- asthma
- otitis media
- Impaired sense of smell
- meningitis
- Cancer
You can do that
According to the Federal Center for Health Education, a baby dies in Germany every week because their parents smoke. Passive smoking during or after pregnancy increases the risk of sudden infant death and many other diseases and defects enormously. To protect your child, you should avoid places where people smoke or smoke as a precaution. You can also ask smokers not to smoke near your child and make them aware of the dangers. There should be an absolute ban on smoking, especially within your own four walls.