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September 19, 2007Secondhand Smoke Increases Teen Test Failure |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Teens exposed to secondhand smoke at home are at increased risk of test failure in school, suggests a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Taking other known risk factors into account --- for example, socioeconomic status, gender, prenatal exposure to smoking and active smoking during adolescence--- Collins and his colleagues found that exposure to secondhand smoke at home decreased the odds of passing standardized achievement tests by 30 percent in 16- and 18-year-olds. Surprisingly, the study found that when examining the effects of prenatal tobacco exposure and secondhand smoke together, prenatal exposure did not influence test performance. "It's important that we help smoking parents learn how to reduce their children's exposure to secondhand smoke, a goal that can be achieved without requiring the parent to immediately quit smoking, although that's the ultimate goal for the health of the entire family," said Collins. The researchers, who analyzed data from 6,380 pregnant women and children from the 1958 British National Child Development Study, initially were interested in the long-term effects of prenatal exposure to smoking on adolescent achievement test performance when controlling for the effects of secondhand smoke exposure during adolescence. The researchers note that the United States and the United Kingdom share similar statistics on smoking: Approximately one third of women in their childbearing years are smokers, 10 percent to15 percent of women report smoking during pregnancy, and up to 60 percent of children may be exposed to smoke at home. The study did not reveal why secondhand smoke influenced failure, and the researchers were unable to include other known factors, for example, learning disabilities, that could also affect learning and academic test performance.
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