Smoking Bans Help to Reduce Premature Births
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Mark Richardson/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Smokers may hate them but bans on lighting up at work and in public places are helping people who aren’t even alive yet.
A study out of the Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands reveals that certain smoking prohibitions accounted for a 10 percent decrease in premature births in both North America and Europe.
Dr. Jasper Been says that smoke-free job sites and public places were also responsible for a 5 percent decrease in children being born very small for their gestational age.
There was another bonus as well: severe asthma attacks that send youngsters to the hospital were also on the decline.
The researchers said their findings were based on smoke-free laws in North America and European countries involving 2.5 million births and a quarter million flare-ups of childhood asthma.
Currently, comprehensive smoking bans cover 16 percent of the world’s population. It’s believed that four in ten children are exposed regularly to secondhand smoke.
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