A recent study finds that longstanding childhood second-hand smoke (SHS) exposure is linked to higher mortality in adulthood due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
70,900 individuals aged 50 years and above registered from 1992-1993 to 2016-2017 who had not smoked, included in the Cancer Prevention Study–II Nutrition Cohort, provided data which was analyzed by researchers to find any link between exposure to SHS in childhood and adulthood and the mortality risk in later life.

The researchers published their findings in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, which saw that children who were exposed to SHS for about 16-18 years showed 31% more chances of mortality from COPD than children who were devoid of such exposure. Any amount of exposure to SHS in childhood showed 21% more chances of death due to COPD.

“It is established that SHS [secondhand smoke] exposure in childhood can result in asthma, chronic wheezing, respiratory infections, and decreased lung function and growth in children,” wrote W. Ryan Diver, a cancer epidemiologist, and his colleagues from the Epidemiology Research Program at the American Cancer Society. “These respiratory illnesses in early life are associated with worse lung function in adolescence and adulthood, as indicated by a lower forced expiratory volume in a 1-second plateau, and ultimately a diagnosis of COPD.”

Additional studies are needed to confirm these findings as the latest Surgeon General’s report believes that the link between SHS and higher COPD mortality risk is “suggestive but not sufficient,” noted the study authors.

“The associations observed with both childhood exposure to SHS and adult exposure to SHS add to the mounting data relating SHS to COPD,” they wrote.