Secondhand Smoke: How to Protect Your Child With Asthma

Tobacco smoke contains many harmful chemicals, and it can make your child's asthma worse. Secondhand smoke is the smoke that comes from the burning end of the cigarette, cigar, or pipe, and the smoke that the smoker breathes out. Non-smokers can breathe in this smoke, which can cause health problems. Smoke stays in the air and on surfaces long after a person puts out their cigarette. Making your home and car smoke-free will help protect your child from the dangers of tobacco smoke and help keep his or her asthma under control.

• Make your home and car completely smoke-free, even when children are not around. Smoking in one room of the house pollutes all the air in the house. Air filters, air fresheners, and open windows can't remove tobacco smoke from the air. Even a small amount of smoke can harm your child — even smoke you can't smell. If someone needs to smoke, they should go outside and stay away from open windows.

• Remove all ashtrays, lighters, and other smoking materials from your home. This helps to prevent smoking in your home.

• Ask babysitters, friends, and relatives not to smoke around your child.

• Only go to smoke-free restaurants.

• Homes where your child plays or has sleepovers should be smoke-free. Explain to other parents that your child cannot be around tobacco smoke. When that's not possible, ask your child to invite friends over to your smoke-free home for playtime.

• If you or anyone else in your household smokes:

  • Call 1-800-QUIT-NOW or visit www.smokefree.gov for advice on quitting.

  • Keep your rule that no one EVER smokes in the house or car.

  • When smokers come back inside, they should wash their hands and change their clothing, especially before holding or hugging children.

• Your child has a flare-up and the asthma medicine is not helping.

• Your child is having more flare-ups than usual.

• Your child needs asthma medicine more often than prescribed.

• You need more ideas for keeping your home and car smoke-free.

Your child is having trouble breathing. Signs you might see include:

• the skin between your child's ribs and neck pulls in tight during breathing

• the nostrils puff out with each breath

• your child is breathing faster than usual

Call 911 if your child:

• is struggling to breathe

• is too out of breath to talk or walk

• turns blue around the mouth

Also call 911 if your health care provider suggested using a peak flow meter and your child can barely blow into it (red zone).

What can happen if my child is exposed to secondhand smoke? Kids who are around secondhand smoke have more ear and lung infections, slower lung growth, and other problems. Later in life, these kids have a higher risk of heart disease, lung and other cancers, and strokes. Also, kids who grow up in a home where parents smoke are more likely to grow up to be smokers.

For a kid with asthma, secondhand smoke is especially dangerous. Tobacco smoke and asthma both cause the airways to become swollen, narrow, and filled with sticky mucus. Secondhand smoke can cause a kid with asthma to:

• have more asthma flare-ups

• have worse flare-ups

• need to go to the doctor and take medicine more often to keep their asthma under control

• miss more days of school because of flare-ups

Is e-cigarette vapor also harmful? The health risks of being around secondhand vapor from e-cigarettes are not yet clear. But it's safest to keep kids away from e-cigarette vapor too.