Children who spend time around smokers face a higher risk of developing early emphysema as non-smoking adults a new study shows. The results of the study suggest that they may develop emphysema because their young lungs never completely recover from the secondhand smoke exposure.
Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health looked at the CT scans of over 1,700 non-smokers from six U.S. communities. The results showed that about half of them grew up in homes with at least one smoker.
“We were able to detect a difference on CT scans between the lungs of participants who lived with a smoker as a child and those who did not,” Gina Lovasi, an assistant professor of epidemiology said. “Some known harmful effects of tobacco smoke are short-term, and this new research suggests that effects of tobacco smoke on the lungs may also persist for decades.”
The researchers did not find a link between childhood exposure to tobacco smoke and lung function. “However, emphysema may be a more sensitive measure of damage compared with lung function in this relatively healthy cohort,” Lovasi stated.
The findings are published in the December issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
