A groundbreaking study by Israeli scientists has revealed that exposure to secondhand smoke directly harms children’s sleep by acting on the central nervous system, independent of respiratory problems caused by environmental smoke.

The peer-reviewed research showed that children exposed to secondhand smoke slept significantly worse than their peers, even when their breathing was clear and blood oxygen levels remained completely normal.

“Eliminating tobacco smoke from a child’s environment can immediately improve sleep efficiency, brain recovery, and overall pediatric health,” said the study’s co-leader, Prof. Ariel Tarasiuk, via video call.

The researchers called on pediatricians to include questions about parents’ or caretakers’ smoking when children are seen at a clinic or admitted to a hospital.

“Pediatricians probably don’t ask that question, but they should,” Tarasiuk said.

The study appeared on Monday in Scientific Reports.

Medical literature shows that environmental tobacco smoke causes inflammation and snoring in young children, Tarasiuk said.

However, he explained that after children were treated for their respiratory problems, “their parents came and said, ‘Look, our child is not snoring as much, but he still moves a lot in bed,’ and so on. This got us interested.”

The first challenge for the researchers was recognizing that parents and caretakers underreported their cigarette smoking.

“Parents do not always accurately confess that they are smoking,” Tarasiuk said. “But we don’t look at it from a judgment point of view. It is partially cultural, partially shame.”

Testing confirmed that nearly half of the children had at least one smoking parent, 60 percent of whom explicitly denied exposing their child to secondhand smoke.

The researchers used questionnaires and measured the cotinine found in the........

© The Times of Israel