Define navigation bar settings. This page was written to answer some of the questions most often asked about passive smoking. Feel free to ask your doctor or nurse to go over any information you do not understand. Non-smoking children who live in homes with smokers are exposed to cigarette smoke.
Secondhand smoke is exhaled by the smoker.
Side-stream smoke rises off the end of a burning cigarette and makes most of the smoke in a room. Side-stream smoke contains two or three times more harmful chemicals than secondhand smoke because it does not pass through the cigarette filter. At worst, a child in a very smoky room for one hour with several smokers inhales as many bad chemicals as he could by smoking 10 or more cigarettes. In general, children of smoking mothers absorb more smoke into their bodies than children of smoking fathers because most children spend more time with their mothers. Children who are breastfed by a smoking mother are at risk because chemicals are found in the breast milk as well as in the air around them.