Children exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes end up missing more school due to illness than children who live with non-smokers, a new study exhibits. The researchers analyzed data from the 2005 National Health Interview Survey, which tracked how many days of school children aged 6 to 11 missed and the reason for missing.

Just another reason not to smoke -children living with smokers missed 1-2 days more per year on average than children living with non-smokers. It’s important to note that the reasoning for this is that the children are getting sick, so the absences aren’t the only thing to notice with this research. The research also suggests that absenteeism could be reduced by 24 to 34 percent if people stopped smoking in the house.

A CNN reporter states the rest of the story:

According to the study, about one third of children in the United States live with a smoker. Among children aged 3 to 11, at least 56% have detectable levels of a chemical called serum cotinine, an indication of tobacco smoke exposure. Cotinine is a breakdown of nicotine and can be measured by analyzing levels in the blood, urine or saliva. Researchers say this establishes a link between household smoking and two specific respiratory illnesses.

“Kids living with people smoking in the home were more likely to have ear infections and chest colds,” Dr. Douglas Levy, the study’s principal investigator and Assistant in Health Care Policy at the Mongan Institute for Health Policy said. “Among kids who were living with smokers, a quarter to one-third of the days they missed from school can be attributed to the fact that they live with someone who smokes in the home.”

The study found that having multiple smokers in the home resulted in more  illnesses reported and days of school missed. For example, a child living with 2 or more adult smokers had more ear infections– three or more–in a year, than a child living with no smokers or even just one smoker.

An increase in illness was not the only consequence smoking at homr. Levy says there is a financial burden as well because parents or other caregivers must take off work to care for sick children. “When kids are home from school, particularly young kids, the cost overall is $227 million dollars per year. All due to the extra days that we see kids missing school because of secondhand smoke exposure,” said Levy.

Adults in non-smoking households were more educated, had higher incomes and were more likely to be Hispanic the study found. Homes with 2 or more smokers also had higher incomes but were more often white. About half the kids in the study that lived with a smoker were from low-income households Levy said. His advice to parents? “If you are a smoker do not smoke around your kids whether it be at home or in the car. Even better advice is to try to quit smoking.”

The study was not without limitations. Children over 12 were excluded from the study because of the possibility that exposure could be due to their own smoking. And study authors acknowldege their measure of tobacco smoke exposure was not precise and they were not able to measure exposure that might have happened outside of the home.

Smoke gets in your ears — if you’re a teen exposed to secondhand smoke — and is associated with hearing loss, a large study suggested.

Exposed adolescents were 1.83 times more likely to experience low-frequency hearing loss than those who had no exposure, according to Dr. Anil K. Lalwani and colleagues from New York University in New York City.

And the greatest risk for hearing loss — a 2.72-fold increase — was in those with the highest levels of exposure as determined by serum cotinine levels, Lalwani’s group reported in the July Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.

The list of potentially harmful outcomes associated with exposure to secondhand smoke continues to grow, from low birth weight to behavioral and cognitive problems and respiratory tract infections — and more than half of U.S. children are exposed.

In the first study to examine secondhand smoke exposure and sensorineural hearing loss in young people, the investigators analyzed cross-sectional data from the 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

They identified 1,533 nonsmokers ages 12 to 19 who had undergone audiometric testing and whose serum cotinine levels had been measured.

Low-frequency sensorineural hearing loss was defined as a pure-tone level above 15 dB for 0.5, 1, and 2 kHz, while high-frequency loss was a level above 15 dB for 3, 4, 6, and 8 kHz.

Overall rates of hearing loss ranged from 3.68 percent for bilateral high-frequency hearing loss to 9.55 percent for unilateral low-frequency hearing loss.

Yet only 18.43 percent of the teens with these forms of hearing loss were aware of the problem.

Other factors associated with hearing loss included a history of eczema, black race, and having been cared for in a neonatal intensive care unit.

When participants were divided into quartiles by level of serum cotinine, the prevalence increased from 7.53 percent in nonexposed adolescents to 17.05 percent of those with the highest level of this marker of tobacco exposure.

The researchers noted that the link of secondhand smoke exposure with elevated thresholds ranging from 0.5 kHz to 8 kHz suggests “that the injury to the inner ear is global.”

In addition, the unilateral hearing loss is probably an early phase of ocular damage that is likely to progress in severity, they cautioned.

The elevated thresholds at 2, 3, and 4 kHz were particularly important, according to Lalwani and colleagues.

“These mid-to-high frequencies are critical for hearing in humans and are responsible for the clarity of hearing that allows us to discriminate between similar sounding words,” they observed.

Possible mechanisms by which secondhand smoke could result in auditory damage include effects on the vasculature of the inner ear and injury from nicotine or other components of the smoke.

Hearing loss in young children has been shown to interfere with not only speech and language development, but also cognitive function, academic progress, and social interaction.

But newborns and young children are routinely screened for hearing difficulties, while adolescents are not.

The findings of this study suggest that teens who are exposed to secondhand smoke should have their hearing tested, and parents and caretakers should be made aware of the auditory hazards of their smoking.

Limitations of the study include its use of cross-sectional data which doesn’t allow assignment of causation, lack of information on duration and sources of secondhand smoke exposure — including prenatal exposure — and absence of data on other factors such as exposure to loud noises.

The researchers also were unable to rule out the possibility that some of the participants had conductive, rather than sensorineural, hearing loss.

They concluded, “Future studies need to investigate the adverse consequences of this early hearing loss on social development, academic performance, behavioral and cognitive function, and public health costs.”