Passive smoking causes irreversible damage to children's arteries, said researchers from Australia and Finland in an article, published in European Heart Journal.
Research involved 3.7 thousand people and was consisted of two isolated from each other stages - the first of which began in 1980, and the second - in 1985.
The scientists used ultrasound to measure the thickness of the children's artery walls.
It appeared that children, who were passive smokers because of their parents' addiction, had thicker artery walls compared to their peers, whose parents are non-smokers. Moreover, the passive smokers' arteries looked as if they worked for 3.3 years more than their real age.
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