Many Smokers Light Up With Kids in Car – Study


Only one-quarter of smoking parents adopt a strict smoke-free car policy, and nearly half who don’t enforce such a ban light up while driving with their children, a new study indicates.

Interviewing nearly 800 smoking parents, researchers also found that two out of three parents with strict smoke-free home policies don’t match that stance in their cars. Nearly three-quarters of smoking parents admitted that someone had smoked in their car in the last three months — suggesting parents don’t recognise the dangers of exposing their kids to tobacco residue in such a confined space.

“We’ve seen that a high number of parents don’t smoke in their homes and expected the same kind of [behaviour] in cars, so we were shocked and surprised,” said study author Dr. Emara Nabi-Burza, a senior clinical research coordinator at the Center for Child and Adolescent Health Research and Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children in Boston.

“For some reason, the car isn’t considered an environment where children can be exposed to tobacco smoke,” she added. “Parents think putting down the windows is fine. They don’t think of it as an indoor exposure for children, which is where we need to step in and make people aware.”

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