“It’s just like high cholesterol or obesity; in a child, they are kind of silent – asymptomatic,” Raghuveer said. “Fortunately, we don’t have children who have a heart attack or a stroke because of hypertension or obesity or high cholesterol. But at the same time … these risks only increase in magnitude and severity if exposures and poor lifestyle persist.
“So it’s important to recognize that there are lifelong cardiovascular consequences.”
Statistics are even more concerning when broken down by race and economic status.
A recent study in JAMA Internal Medicine found Black nonsmokers had more than twice the rate of secondhand smoke exposure during 2017-2018 than non-Hispanic white adults – 48% compared to 22%.
Similarly, the number of people living below the poverty level who were exposed to secondhand smoke, 45%, was more than twice that of those not in poverty.
“Populations with a lower socioeconomic status have higher smoking rates, lower knowledge about health risks of tobacco, higher risk of workplace exposure, and higher likelihood of living in low-income multi-unit housing and have their communities targeted more by tobacco companies,” the authors write.
It can be difficult to curb those trends because of social and cultural acceptance, says Dr. Surendranath S. Shastri, professor of health disparities research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
“We find that more than 60% of African Americans want to quit but only a small portion actually reach out to quitting programs,” he says. “It’s only 5% of the population of (total) smokers that quit at any point in time.”