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A brand new examine reveals a troubling connection between hostile childhood experiences and kids’s publicity to tobacco smoke of their houses.
The examine was led by College of Cincinnati researcher Ashley Merianos, who makes a speciality of tobacco use and its results.
The analysis, revealed in Baby Safety and Observe, highlights that in the USA, school-aged kids dealing with trauma akin to parental divorce, neighborhood violence or monetary hardship are considerably extra prone to stay in households the place tobacco is used—placing their well being at additional threat.
“Adverse childhood experiences [ACEs] and tobacco smoke exposure are two major independent problems faced by school-aged children in the U.S.,” notes Merianos, a professor in UC’s Faculty of Human Providers, inside the Faculty of Schooling, Prison Justice, and Human Providers, and Info Know-how.
Merianos has spent over a decade researching the consequences of tobacco use (together with vaping) on public well being—with an emphasis on childhood improvement.
Key findings:
Because the variety of ACEs will increase, so does the chance of youngsters dwelling with tobacco customers and being uncovered to dangerous smoke.
Each household-related trauma (like parental separation) and community-level adversity (akin to witnessing neighborhood violence) correlate with elevated publicity.
Even kids whose caregivers smoke completely outdoors the house are in danger, on account of thirdhand smoke residue on clothes, furnishings and surfaces.
“There is a common myth that children living with tobacco smokers who only smoke outside their homes are safe from tobacco smoke exposure and its negative health outcomes,” says Merianos.
Third-hand smoke
This examine reveals that ACEs enhance the chance that kids stay with tobacco people who smoke who smoke solely outdoor or are uncovered to thirdhand smoke solely, she says.
The findings additionally counsel that ACEs could also be a root reason for publicity to thirdhand smoke—or each secondhand and thirdhand smoke—urging well being and coverage leaders to think about trauma-informed approaches to tobacco prevention and family well being interventions.
Merianos is an affiliate member of the Thirdhand Smoke Analysis Consortium.
Thirdhand smoke is both inhaling, ingesting or absorbing by means of the pores and skin the pollution which might be left behind within the surroundings after tobacco has been smoked. The pollution will be discovered on partitions, furnishings and decorations.
Merianos lately led a examine in collaboration with Cincinnati Youngsters’s on the degrees of thirdhand smoke in 80 houses the place kids reside. That examine discovered nicotine on surfaces in all the kids’s houses and detected the presence of a tobacco-specific carcinogen in practically half of the houses.
Within the present examine, the authors name for focused insurance policies to handle each ACEs and environmental tobacco publicity to guard susceptible populations.
Extra data:
Ashley L. Merianos et al, Adversarial childhood experiences and tobacco smoke publicity amongst U.S. school-aged kids, Baby Safety and Observe (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.chipro.2025.100210
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College of Cincinnati
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Examine finds hostile childhood experiences enhance kids’s threat of publicity to smoke (2025, August 8)
retrieved 8 August 2025
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