I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
Don’t Smoke Around My Kid
April 21, 2014
I live in Tennessee where, despite laws limiting smoking in public places, plenty of people still do it. Hey, if you want to destroy your lungs, go for it. It’s your life and your decision. I just have one simple request:
Don’t smoke around my kid.
You’d think this would go without saying– but way too many smokers around here don’t seem to give a damn who’s around them when they light up. They puff away on crowded outdoor patios at family restaurants, in the car rider pick-up line at my kids’ school, at Little League baseball games, in line at the ice cream shop window, at children’s fairs and festivals, and wherever else they can legally get away with it.
I’m tired of saying nothing when this stuff happens. Being around a smoker is far more than an annoyance. It’s harmful to the health of everyone in the vicinity, and while it’s bad enough that non-smoking adults are impacted, the fact that these smokers are potentially damaging the health of children is inexcusable.
Not convinced? Check out these facts about secondhand smoke from the American Cancer Society:
- Smoke from the end of a lighted cigarette has higher concentrations of cancer-causing agents (carcinogens) and is more toxic than smoke exhaled by a smoker. And, it has smaller particles than mainstream smoke. These smaller particles make their way into the lungs and the body’s cells more easily.
- There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Any exposure is harmful.
- Babies and children exposed to secondhand smoke are at an increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), upper respiratory and lung infections, ear infections, and more severe and frequent asthma attacks.
- Secondhand smoke causes worse asthma and asthma-related problems in up to 1 million asthmatic children every year in the US.
- Secondhand smoke is responsible for between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections (lung and bronchus) in children under 18 months of age annually, with 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations each year.
- There is also some evidence suggesting that secondhand smoke might be linked to lymphoma, leukemia, and brain tumors in children.
I’m going to say it again.
Don’t smoke around my kid. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.
I don’t care if you’re just doing what your own father did around you 40 years ago. I don’t care if it’s the only cigarette you’re smoking all day. I don’t care if you at least only smoke around your family members because you know they don’t want to hurt your feelings and won’t say anything. I don’t care if it’s technically legal to smoke where you’re smoking.
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
If you’ve just got to light up, do it inside your home (assuming that home never has any kids in it). Or at a bar where smoking is allowed and children won’t be present. Or in the middle of the frozen tundra, miles from civilization.
Just don’t smoke around my kid.
I’m writing this here because it’s hard to say it to you in person. I try to be tolerant of others’ choices, even if I disagree– but some things are just plain wrong, and smoking around kids is one of them. Like you, I grew up before laws were passed limiting smoking in public places and I was exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke as a child. I’ve suffered from respiratory problems and illnesses all my life. I think we can do better for our children. I think most of us are working to create a healthier environment for them.
I need you to get on board, too.
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Very timely! I had taken my 18mo daughter to the playground just this weekend where there was a grandma there with her kids. The grandma was standing right there next to all the playground equipment smoking away. I was appalled and shocked to see someone doing that! I loudly said to my daughter “let’s go over to this other part of the playground… there’s really dangerous cigarette smoke over here!” The grandma gave me a dirty, dirty look but walked away to a park bench that was a bit out of the way.
I think a lot of people are just assuming it’s okay because it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. But with all the facts we have now about secondhand smoke, some smokers definitely need a wake-up call about how they’re affecting the people around them.
Its a myth second hand smoke never harmed a thing not even a child much less a fly above a smokers table….Have you actually looked at what the chemical make up is of SHS/ETS! Here Its a short lesson and please don’t laugh at yourself to much!
About 90% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a minor amount of carbon dioxide. The volume of water vapor of second hand smoke becomes even larger as it quickly disperses into the air,depending upon the humidity factors within a set location indoors or outdoors. Exhaled smoke from a smoker will provide 20% more water vapor to the smoke as it exists the smokers mouth.
4 % is carbon monoxide.
6 % is those supposed 4,000 chemicals to be found in tobacco smoke. Unfortunatley for the smoke free advocates these supposed chemicals are more theorized than actually found.What is found is so small to even call them threats to humans is beyond belief.Nanograms,picograms and femptograms……
(1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80).
It’s not just the smoke. A few years ago at the Minnesota State Fair (where people are often jammed tightly together) a woman was smoking and in the process of lifting and lowering the cigarette to and from her mouth, she managed to lower it right into a 2 year old girl’s eye.
Let’s just say the following year, the fair board changed the rules so smoking is only allowed in about 5 small specific smoking areas around the fairgrounds.
That happened to me as a kid, too- but the burn was on my shoulder and I was five. I can still remember how much it hurt.
Nord Med. 1994;109(4):121-5.
[Environmental somatization syndrome. How to deal with the external milieu syndrome?].
[Article in Swedish]
Nilsson CG, Göthe CJ, Molin C.
SourceMed Rehabiliteringskliniken, Huddinge Sjukhus.
Abstract
Somatization is a tendency to experience and communicate psychogenic distress in the form of somatic symptoms and to seek medical help for them. Patients suffering from environmental somatization syndrome (ESS) consider their symptoms to be caused by exposure to chemical or physical components of the external environment or by ergonomic stress at work. ESS is distinguished by mental contagiousness and a tendency to cluster. Sometimes it explodes in wide-spread epidemics that may be escalated by mass-media campaigns. Extensive ESS epidemics have been connected to, i.a., arsenic, carbon monoxide (“generator gas poisoning”), mercury (“oral galvanism”), carbon-free copy papers, electromagnetic fields (“electric allergy”) and repetitive movements (“repetition strain injury”, RSI). The typical patient directs the interest on the external environment, refuses alternative explanations of his symptoms and abhors any suggestion of a psychogenic etiology.
The community is often placed in difficult positions by lobby groups calling for drastic measures to eliminate alleged disease-inducing exposures. When hygienic evils occur simultaneously with an ESS epidemic, it is essential to strictly differ the hygienic problems from the ESS problems. If mismanaged, measures aimed at reducing hygienic inconveniences may aggravate the complex of ESS problems.
Heres a time line starting in 1900,dont be surprised to see the same thing playing out today nearly 100 years later.
1901: REGULATION: Strong anti-cigarette activity in 43 of the 45 states. “Only Wyoming and Louisiana had paid no attention to the cigarette controversy, while the other forty-three states either already had anti-cigarette laws on the books or were considering new or tougher anti-cigarette laws, or were the scenes of heavy anti- cigarette activity” (Dillow, 1981:10).
1904: New York: A judge sends a woman is sent to jail for 30 days for smoking in front of her children.
1904: New York City. A woman is arrested for smoking a cigarette in an automobile. “You can’t do that on Fifth Avenue,” the arresting officer says.
1907: Busines
Kids should be more careful than to get in the way at crowded areas. Ive seen them stampeded and stepped all over when some insane person screamed second hand smoke RUN RUN !!!!
Lies about second hand smoke abound everywhere the facts are its HARMLESS!
This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.
By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………
Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!
The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:
Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.
146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.
A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.
Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!
Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: Third Edition
This sorta says it all
These limits generally are based on assessments of health risk and calculations of concentrations that are associated with what the regulators believe to be negligibly small risks. The calculations are made after first identifying the total dose of a chemical that is safe (poses a negligible risk) and then determining the concentration of that chemical in the medium of concern that should not be exceeded if exposed individuals (typically those at the high end of media contact) are not to incur a dose greater than the safe one.
So OSHA standards are what is the guideline for what is acceptable ”SAFE LEVELS”
OSHA SAFE LEVELS
All this is in a small sealed room 9×20 and must occur in ONE HOUR.
For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes.
“For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes.
“Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.
Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up.
“For Hydroquinone, “only” 1250 cigarettes.
For arsenic 2 million 500,000 smokers at one time.
The same number of cigarettes required for the other so called chemicals in shs/ets will have the same outcomes.
So, OSHA finally makes a statement on shs/ets :
Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.” -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA.
Why are their any smoking bans at all they have absolutely no validity to the courts or to science!
The inconvenient truth is that the only studies of children of smokers suggest it is PROTECTIVE in contracting atopy in the first place. The New Zealand study says by a staggering factor of 82%.
“Participants with atopic parents were also less likely to have positive SPTs between ages 13 and 32 years if they smoked themselves (OR=0.18), and this reduction in risk remained significant after adjusting for confounders.
The authors write: “We found that children who were exposed to parental smoking and those who took up cigarette smoking themselves had a lower incidence of atopy to a range of common inhaled allergens.
“These associations were found only in those with a parental history of asthma or hay fever.”
They conclude: Our findings suggest that preventing allergic sensitization is not one of them.”
The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Volume 121, Issue 1 , Pages 38-42.e3, January 2008
.
This is a Swedish study.
“Children of mothers who smoked at least 15 cigarettes a day tended to have lower odds for suffering from allergic rhino-conjunctivitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema and food allergy, compared to children of mothers who had never smoked (ORs 0.6-0.7)
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates an association between current exposure to tobacco smoke and a low risk for atopic disorders in smokers themselves and a similar tendency in their children.”
Clin Exp Allergy 2001 Jun;31(6):908-14
If you are still smoking this day and age with all the information out there and all the available help to quit, then you are a fool.
Who smokes anymore????? Gross.
I do really wonder why people continue to smoke now that there are electronic cigarettes that deliver the nicotine without the potential cancer and the smell…
It always gives me an asthma attack. I shouldn’t need to explain why that’s a problem, but for some reason, smokers seem to think it is only my problem and I ought to “stay home.” I know this because I have politely asked that they not smoke around me, and I’ve yet to have one say, “Oh I had no idea it could provoke an asthma attack, I’m sorry. I’ll wait until later.” I have had plenty say who cares.
Wow. This post is so great and says exactly how I feel. Just like with anything else, if you mess with my kids you deal with me. I actually will say something to a person smoking too close to the entrance of a store or on a playground. In Utah now you can’t smoke in bars. So you walk down the street downtown and people are in groups smoking on the sidewalk. It’s horrible. E-cigarettes definitely aren’t as bad to smelll but there isn’t enough research to know if it’s ok to breath in the secondhand vapors. I don’t want my kids breathing that either. There little lungs deserve a chance.
Again, Thanks for posting this and hopefully it will make people think a little bit.
Can I get an Amen? My 4 year old has serious respiratory reactions to irritants like smoke and I have asthma. Cigarette smoke Messes. Us. Up. And smoking makes you sick. My grandma smoked for over four decades and finally quit when she started to develop emphysema and it will affect her for the rest of her life.
And can I whine for a moment? I live in Colorado where they have very strict smoking laws for cigarettes – you cannot smoke indoors at any commercial establishment and cannot smoke within ten feet of the entrance of any commercial establishment (if I’m remembering correctly). BUT. As the rest of the country knows our state legalized marijuana (I didn’t vote for that) yet failed to put any of those parameters in place. So people be smokin’ joints all over the place around here. Right next to the front door of Starbucks downtown. And that stuff messes with my lungs. And it smells like a cross between cigarette smoke and cat pee. Ew.
Wow! This was very well said!!
We are a no smoking state, and I love it. There is no smoking in public venues, no smoking on State property (actually, no tobacco use at all.) When we leave our state and go out to eat and they ask smoking or non, I stare at them like they have three heads. With an asthmatic family, it’s even better to breathe non smoky air.