<strong>China: Behavior Problems in Kids Linked to Secondhand Smoke</strong>

Source from:  HLN-TV (CNN)  04/07/2013

A new study is linking a pregnant woman's exposure to secondhand smoke and their child's behavioral problems.

As noted in MyHealthNewsDaily, researchers, led by Jianghong Liu at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, studied more than 600 mother/child pairs in Jintan, China.
 
Of the 37% of mothers who reported exposure to secondhand smoke during pregnancy, 25% of their children showed aggression and attention problems, the study says. Behavior problems only were shown in 16% of the children whose mothers were not exposed to secondhand smoke.
 
Children at age 5, whose mothers were exposed to secondhand smoke for at least 30 minutes daily, were more than twice as likely to have attention and aggression problems.
 
Researchers, though, can't say for sure whether other variables, such as premature birth or low birth weight, influenced the results of this study.
 
However, the researchers did take into account other factors that could have possibly affected the child's behavior, like levels of lead in the child's blood, the mother's age at childbirth or the child's gender.
 
The study was published in the journal NeuroToxicology. Enditem