Women and Smoking
Breast
Milk and Smoke
June 13, 1998
Mothers who go into
the next room, or outside to smoke a cigarette may not be doing enough
to protect their babies because the smoke also shows up in breast milk.
A study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that
even secondhand smoke can show up in mother's milk, and later in baby's
urine. In fact, babies may get more secondhand smoke from breast milk
than by breathing secondhand smoke, said Dr. Maria Mascola at
Massachusetts General Hospital.
San Mateo County
Times, Page NEWS-2
Women
Who Live with Smokers at Risk for Lung Cancer
| A new study found that women who live with
smokers are five to six times more likely to get lung cancer than women
who live with non-smokers, the Associated Press reported March 6.
"A number of studies have shown a connection between environmental
tobacco smoke and lung cancer," said Stephen S. Hecht, professor of
cancer prevention at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. "Our
study provides the first biochemical support for this data."
The study found that wives of smokers had higher levels of cancer
chemicals in their urine than wives of non-smoking men. Researchers
determined that the wives of smokers absorbed the cancer-causing compounds
NNAL and NNAL-Gluc from the atmosphere through their lungs.
"It is clear that environmental tobacco smoke has all the
carcinogens that are contained in tobacco smoke," said Hecht. He
added that tobacco smoke in homes with central heating and
air-conditioning systems tends to spread throughout a house.
"If you smoke in one part of a house, the smoke doesn't just stay
in that part," said Hecht. "About the only safe thing that a
woman who lives with a smoker can do is to tell him to go outside when he
smokes."
The study is published in the March 7 Journal
of the National Cancer Institute.
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Second-Hand
Smoke Risky for Pre-Menopausal Women
| A study found that pre-menopausal women
exposed to second-hand smoke are twice as likely to get breast cancer,
Reuters reported March 16.
"The longer the exposure, the higher the risk," said the Health
Canada study entitled, "Passive and Active Smoking and Breast
Cancer Risk in Canada."
The study compared 1,420 women diagnosed with breast cancer to those
without cancer. Researchers found that long-term exposure to second-hand
smoke doubled the risk of breast cancer. In addition, the risk of breast
cancer increased in post-menopausal women exposed to second-hand smoke.
"While a study of this nature cannot confirm a causal relationship
of second-hand smoke to breast cancer, it can contribute to the
identification of important associations," said Health Canada.
Dr. Kenneth Johnson, the study's lead epidemiologist, said that other
studies have shown a "strong and consistent" association between
passive smoking and breast cancer.
"If our study was just a lone study and we found these kinds of
results we wouldn't be presenting them in such an enthusiastic manner. But
there have been six other studies done on passive smoking and breast
cancer and all of them have a suggestion of increased risk," said
Johnson.
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Pregnant
Smokers Increase Child's Risk of Infection
| Researchers determined that children of women
who smoked during pregnancy tend to get sick more often in their first
year of life than other children, Reuters reported Feb. 9.
Dr. Wei Yuan and colleagues at the University of Aarhus in Denmark
found that children of pregnant smokers are at a greater risk of being
hospitalized for upper respiratory tract infections, diarrhea, or other
problems.
For their study, researchers analyzed the hospital records of 10,400
Danish children. According to Yuan, children who had mothers who smoked in
pregnancy were 24 percent more likely to be hospitalized than youngsters
with nonsmoking mothers.
"Maternal smoking during pregnancy and a low pre-pregnancy body
mass index (BMI) are associated with a higher risk of hospitalization with
infectious disease during early childhood," the researchers wrote.
Yuan further noted that the child's risk of infection rose along with
the number of cigarettes smoked daily, as well as the nicotine level of
the cigarettes. Researchers concluded that, "the structural
development of some target organs could be affected by the mother's smoke,
which may lead to a higher susceptibility to bacterial and viral
attacks."
The study is published in the February issue of Pediatrics.
|
Women
More Vulnerable to Smoking Risks
| A new study found that women are more at risk
than men for developing breathing problems and other harmful consequences
of smoking, Reuters reported Nov. 14.
"We don't know the exact cause of this. But it is probably because
lungs of women are generally smaller than men's," said Arnulf
Langhammer of the National Institute of Public Health in Norway. "If
they smoke the same amount, women are exposed to higher concentrations of
noxious gas."
In a study of 65,000 male and female smokers and nonsmokers, Langhammer
and his colleagues determined that all smokers were twice as likely as
nonsmokers to report respiratory symptoms like wheezing, breathlessness
and coughing. "There was a strong association between tobacco smoking
and respiratory symptoms. With increasing cigarette burden, women had a 50
percent higher risk of having respiratory problems and asthma,"
Langhammer explained.
The researchers found that the prevalence of asthma increased in line
with the number of cigarettes women smoked. No such increase was found in
male smokers. "Higher prevalence of respiratory symptoms and current
asthma in women compared with men with the same smoke burden or daily
cigarette consumption indicate women are more susceptible to tobacco
smoking than men," concluded Langhammer.
The study is published in the Journal
of Epidemiology and Community Health
|
| Friday January 4 1:29 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Younger female smokers are more likely to try
to extinguish their habit than their older counterparts, Swiss researchers
report.
Their study of more than 3,600 women aged 35 to 74 found that those under
55 years of age were more likely to be past or current smokers. Younger
women were also more likely to have tried to quit smoking before age 35, and
reported more attempts at quitting than the older women. They were also more
likely to have picked up their habit before they reached their 20th birthday
and to be heavier smokers, the investigators note.
The results have important implications for smoking cessation programs,
suggesting that young women may be a good target for such efforts, according
to Dr. Alfredo Morabia of Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland and
colleagues.
``Encouraging young smokers to quit--in addition to preventing nonsmokers
from starting--may be an important facet of reducing cigarette smoking
prevalence among adolescents,'' Morabia and colleagues report in the January
issue of the American Journal of Public Health, journal of the American
Public Health Association |
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