Are there any studies that back up the claim that second hand smoke is a/the cause of SIDS? AFAIK, the main cause of SIDS is sleeping position.
**
Indeed, if we really knew what caused SIDS then we would call it by its actual cause. Not something as vague as “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome,” the real cause of which remains a mystery to this day.
What we really need is to raise our children in bubbles, its the only decent thing to do.
Raising them in a bubble full of cigarette smoke?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=157288&goto=newpost
http://www.nietrokers.nl/e2/n01092.html
"Canadian researchers measured nicotine levels in the lungs of infants who died of SIDS and in babies who died from other causes.
They found higher concentrations of nicotine in SIDS infants, even in cases when the parents reported a non-smoking environment.
Earlier studies linking smoking to SIDS relied solely on reports from parents and relatives. Researchers say fear and embarrassment may have kept families from being honest about smoking habits."
But…that doesn’t prove “causation”. It doesn’t prove that the nicotine in their lungs caused them to die in their sleep. And so far it’s just a theory. Second-hand smoke is widely quoted as being a risk factor for SIDS, but I don’t see a whole lot of actual evidence for it.
There was a study done on mice and nicotine.
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2002/09/11/sids_nicotine020911
However, it also uses the words “it’s thought” and “may support” and “suggests”; it’s just a theory, too. And it finishes up, not with a warning about SIDS and nicotine in infants’ lungs, but a warning about smoking during pregnancy:
Which is different.
And, the NIH is still quoting “sleep position” as the biggest risk factor for SIDS. I don’t see where they even mention second-hand smoke.
The American Medical Association mentions second-hand smoke, but along with many other risk factors.
http://www.ama-assn.org/public/journals/patient/archive/jpg120402.htm
So I don’t think it would be fair to blame a parent who smoked for a SIDS death–there are so many other things that can go wrong, and science still doesn’t really understand the whole syndrome.
You honestly don’t think chainsmoking around an infant won’t hurt it? Its amazing the ends to which smokers will go to deny the lethal effect of the addiction on others, but especially on their children. :rolleyes: I’m sure all that stuff about pregnant women smoking is all balderdash too. We’ve seen how much money the tobacco companies are willing to spend to save their profits, and that includes soothing the conscience of their addicts. God forbid a parent should make the sacrifice of not letting the baby breathe their smoke. The tobacco companies have proven themselves perjured liars before congress and the whole world; yet there are those mercenaries in the highest positions who will take that blood to lie on their behalf. I’ve yet to hear a parent openly admit that their children breathe their second hand smoke and they have no qualms about it.
Virgowitch
I cannot speak for others, but I would wager that they, like I, are not talking about keeping a baby in a closet and billowing it full of smoke. We are talking about ordinary environments where homes and cars are sufficiently ventilated. Even smokers are bothered by rooms that are a blue-gray haze of stagnant smoke.
VW, may I say that your heavy sarcasm is completely out of place. You are implying that I don’t see anything wrong with smoking around babies, when all I said was that to be completely fair, it isn’t proven that second-hand smoke causes SIDS.
Less rhetoric, and more debate, would be welcome.
Well first off, we have found that Libertarian’s cite was useless and did not contribute to this debate at all as it discussed a completely seperate issue. So it doesn’t support either side, as it’s not talking about children specifically, and in the one part where he does mention children, it supports the OP, but was ruled anecdotal.
However, I don’t see how one can deny that cigarette smokes is harmful. Air that is not clean is harmful. That’s a pretty easy one to figure out. I live in New York City, as do many children, and we’re all fine, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be healthier for us if the air were as clean as it would be say, in the mountains of Montana.
Cigarette smoking has been linked to MANY MANY different illnesses, and I suppose none of them has been satisfactorily tied to smoking for the people who love their cigarettes, but the evidence is enough for me.
My parents smoked, and I have done poorly on lung capacity tests as a teenager or adult. Maybe it’s not directly corrolated, but I choose to see a corrolation.
I have no problems with parents choosing to smoke on their porches, or in a properly ventilated room where the child is not. However, I do not think that smoking in the car, or at the dinner table is appropriate. How many children of smokers remember being forced to freeze in the back seat so that their parents could comfortably chain-smoke just in front of the ventilation of their cracked windows with the heat comfortably on their hands and face.
I guess the problem with this is, that the term abuse is too loaded. So no, smoking around your children is probably not child abuse, if you take the appropriate steps to ventilate the area and keep them from breathing it as much as possible. And I would say smoking around them outside is just fine. However, I think that smoking around your children in a car or in the living room is a callous disregard for their well-being in deference to your personal pleasure, and I guess it just depends upon what level of disregard for a child you would view as abuse.
Erek
Mswas wrote:
Are New Yorkers abusing their children? If not, why not?
I don’t think so, however there are conceivable benefits for a child to live in New York City. Access to better schools, greater infrastructure, exposure to many different facets of human culture in such a wide array that’s completely unavailable anywhere else in the world.
What are the benefits to the child of sitting in the living room with his parents smoking?
Erek
Looking at the above, it would seem to me that ETS is a factor that increases a infants risk for SIDS. Looking at the last two factors, Alcohol/drug abuse, and mother’s age younger than 20, these are factors that strongly correlate with smoking. Moreover, late or no prenatal care is usually something that occurs with lower income mothers which I would also think there’s a strong correlation with smoking or a smoking environment.
For those that have pointed out that they were raised with smokers and they are in perfect health, can we make the same argument about beating children? I’m sure there are adults out there that were beaten as a child that are perfectly healthy.
I was raised by smoking parents, and I was also beaten as a child, and I am in perfect health. (Well I have a sore throat this weekend)
Erek
Both my parents chainsmoked in our house. Now dad is dead from cancer, mom is in remission, and I continue my lifelong battle with asthma. Tobacco smoke triggers my asthma, so I aggressivley police a smoke-free zone around myself at all times. Sadly, this has led to injuries, but none of them mine.
So, is there some ground between unwise choices, and child abuse?
Pontificating shitbags that want to accuse everyone who does something different in their lives of being abusive, or whatever other hot button label is in vogue are abusing us all. You are also teaching your children to be total assholes, too, which will get them beaten up a lot, later in life, you abusive rat.
Don’t smoke around your kids. It’s a bad idea.
Don’t trivialize the term child abuse because you managed to quit smoking and want to polish up your halo.
:wally
Tris
Moderator’s Note: Just a reminder that this is not the Pit.
The same benefits as you enumerate about him sitting in New York. Perhaps as they smoke, the parents are teaching him to read, providing him infrastructure, teaching him about other cultures, and so on.
Were you to agree that a parent who subjects his child to air pollution is no different than a parent who subjects his child to cigarette smoke, then there would exist no double-standard to assail.
Comparing air pollution to cigarette smoke is adolescent. Making a child breathe cigarette smoke is a personal, sadistic choice; sort of like the difference between raising a child in sexually permissive culture and molesting it.
Child’s lungs fill with particulates from big city pollution. Child’s lungs fill with particulates from small house pollution. And you choose to differentiate one as culturally permissible and the other as culturally heinous.
The whole thing sounds to me like an argument from convenience. I don’t smoke, so they can put out their cigarettes. But I don’t want to bother with moving, so living in New York is okay.
The parent isn’t creating the pollution from the big city, but is producing the smoke that’s inhaled in a home or a car, which with the windows closed, is at a very high concentration. In the last scenario, the child is for all intents and purposes smoking, even though cigarettes are things that are not to be sold to minors.
Should this even be in GD? Virgowitch asked a question but subsequent replies indicate that this is a firmly held opinion not subject to debate. Perhaps IMHO would have been a better place to post this OP.
What is needed is a clearly objective study of the subject. Such a study, however, is probably not possible in the US, and, maybe not anywhere.
Bob