Parents often unaware of consequences of passive smoking on child

Are you an occasional smoker? Turns out that you are putting many more pairs lungs at risk than yours. Second hand smoking or passive smoking could be putting the respiratory health of your kids in much more severe ways than previously thought. Parents who smoke in front of their kids are more likely to believe that there is no presence of tobacco smoke in the air, but they are clearly mistaken noted a new study.

The study, published in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, stated that parents who smoke are often not aware of its ramifications on their kids. They mistakenly rely on their own physical senses to gauge the presence of tobacco smoke in the air and often undermine it.

"This reliance on their own physical sensory perceptions leads to misconceptions of when and where children are exposed to tobacco smoke," said Laura Rosen, researcher at the Tel Aviv University in Israel.

"No one has previously put their finger on this exposure perception problem. This is important for the ongoing debate about restrictions on smoking in public places, since people may be exposed without being aware of it," Rosen added.

For the study, the team interviewed about 65 parents and discovered that many a times parents shroud themselves in several false assumptions concerning the exposure of their child to their cigarette smoking tendencies.

The researchers also revealed that if they found that if the parents believed that if they did not see or smell the smoke, their children were not exposed.

"Many parents believe they are taking adequate measures to protect their children from the damage of cigarette smoke. But we found that they are not even aware of some of the exposure, and therefore do not take sufficient measures to protect their children," the researchers noted.

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