Cigarette Smoking & Pregnancy
Women who quit cigarette smoking before or during pregnancy reduce the risk of adverse reproductive outcomes.
Women who smoke cigarettes have more difficulty becoming pregnant and have a higher risk of never becoming pregnant. Smoking during pregnancy increases the risks for pregnancy complications, premature birth, spontaneous abortion and stillbirth.
Babies of mothers who smoked cigarettes during pregnancy on average have lower birth weights. Low birth weight babies are at greater risk for childhood and adult illnesses and even death. Women who quit cigarette smoking before the third trimester (the last three months) of pregnancy are more likely to have babies who are close to normal weight.
Smoking by pregnant women can cause sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). According to the 2004 U.S. Surgeon General's Report, infants whose mothers smoked before and after birth are at three to four times greater risk for SIDS, and babies exposed to secondhand smoke after birth are at twice the risk.
When mothers smoke cigarettes during pregnancy, it hurts their babies' lungs. Infants of mothers who smoked cigarettes during pregnancy have reduced lung function and may have increased frequency of lower respiratory tract illness. They may also have increased risk for impaired lung function in childhood and adulthood. For pregnant women, cigarette smoking could also put their babies at increased risk of asthma and respiratory infections.
Secondhand Cigarette Smoke
Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke or ETS, is a combination of the smoke coming from the lit end of a cigarette and the smoke exhaled by a person smoking.
Public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke from cigarettes causes disease, including lung cancer and heart disease, in non-smoking adults, as well as causes conditions in children such as asthma, respiratory infections, cough, wheeze, otitis media (middle ear infection) and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In addition, public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke can exacerbate adult asthma and cause eye, throat and nasal irritation.
The public should be guided by the conclusions of public health officials regarding the health effects of secondhand smoke when deciding whether to be in places where secondhand smoke is present, or if they are smokers, when and where to smoke around others. Particular care should be exercised where children are concerned and adults should avoid smoking cigarettes around them.
The conclusions of public health officials concerning environmental tobacco smoke are sufficient to warrant measures that regulate cigarette smoking in public places. In places where cigarette smoking is permitted, the government should require the posting of warning notices that communicate public health officials' conclusions that secondhand smoke causes disease in non-smokers.
Nat Sherman agrees with the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop such serious diseases than non-smokers.
In this section of our website you will find information on these cigar-related messages, as well as links to government and public health authorities, including the U.S. Surgeon General's reports related to tobacco. Click on the links at the right to obtain more information about cigar smoking and health.