Negative Effects of Smoking on Human Health and the Economy

Pregnancy is a joyful time for most families because that means the mother is bringing a new member into the world who will be welcomed into the family. A mother holding her newborn healthy baby in her arms for the first time makes her feel a sense of pride. This is because she has followed all of her doctor’s instructions and listened to his advice on how to keep herself healthy, and how to deliver a healthy baby after her nine months are up. But what if the new mom to be did not listen to the doctor’s advice? What if she decided to smoke during her pregnancy because she assumed it would not hurt the baby? What health problems or birth defects would the baby be challenged with when it was born? Women who smoke during their pregnancies on

Smoking while pregnant can cause a various of issues to the fetus and to the child while they are in their young ages. It can cause the child to be born 162-226 grams. This weight is lighter than a baby whose mother did not smoke. For example, while the baby is in the womb, it will slow the development of the baby’s organs, due to the toxins entering the baby’s bloodstream (Holmes ?). Another way it can harm the baby while he/she is still in the womb is by causing the baby to be stillborn (not cited yet). This sympathetic damage would have lasting impact on the mother psychologically. This could be especially painful when she has done everything right to protect her unborn

Over the years, statistics show that smoking cigarettes can cause many serious health issues. These issues compound when the smoker is expecting. Fourteen percent of U.S. mothers smoke while pregnant despite knowing the fact that smoking causes harm to both mother and child. In younger mothers, age 25 and under, that number rises significantly to 20 percent. If a woman smokes then becomes pregnant, she must decide whether or not to quit. Woman are aware that cigarettes are not good for them or their baby, but do they understand the severity of smoking while carrying their unborn child in their womb? In this paper I will evaluate how women who smoke while pregnant are at high risk for early miscarriage, preterm birth, and birth defects. Is smoking a cigarette worth risking the life of your unborn child?

More then 15% of women smoking while pregnant. Babies who's mothers smoke have more then 20% higher chance of being born with cleft lip, cleft palates, shortened or missing limbs, and abnormally shaped heads compared to babies born to nonsmoking mothers. Babies born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy are even more likely to have learning disorders and behavioral problems.

Overall, of 103830 records 82534 mothers’ data were analyzed that were obtained from the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Certificate of Live Birth. Descriptive results of maternal and birth characteristics are shown in Table 1. Approximately, 57% of the mothers were white, 33% black, 7% Asian, and 3.6% other ethnicities, respectively. 29% of the maternal age at delivery was between 20-24 years old, 22% was between 25-29 years old, 19% was between 30-34 years old, 14% was between 19 years and younger, 11% was between 35-39 years old, and 4% was between 40 years and older, respectively. The number of LBW babies (< 2500 g) among mothers who smoked and non-smoked were 1359 (1.6%) and 81144 (98.3%), respectively. 16 % of mothers who smoked (n=5544) gave low birth weight babies. 5.4% of low birth weight babies had mothers smoked between 10-14 cigarettes per day.

Introduction: A lot has been said about the relation between maternal smoking and infant mortality in the recent past. According to a report from CDC, the infant mortality rate for 2013 was 5.96 infant deaths per 1000 live births. Sudden infant death syndrome was found to be the 4th leading cause of infant mortality (Kochanek, Xu, Murphy, Miniño, & Kung, 2011). Maternal cigarette smoking is an

Over the years, statistics show that smoking cigarettes can cause many serious health issues. These issues compound when the smoker is expecting. Fourteen percent of U.S. mothers smoke while pregnant despite knowing the fact that smoking causes harm to both mother and child. In younger mothers, age 25 and under, that number rises significantly to 20 percent. If a woman smokes then becomes pregnant, she must decide whether or not to quit. Woman are aware that cigarettes are not good for them or their baby, but do they understand the severity of smoking while carrying their unborn child in their womb? In this paper I will evaluate how women who smoke while pregnant are at high risk for early miscarriage, preterm birth, and birth defects. Is smoking a cigarette worth risking the life of your unborn child?

Research shows that smoking during pregnancy is harmful to both the unborn child and mother. Cigarette smoke causes serious harm to the fetal growth, causes severe neonatal risks and affects the progress of the pregnancy. (BBC News Health) Smoking can also increase the risk of miscarriage, premature birth, still-birth and sudden expected death in infancy. The National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE, 2010) highlights that smoking also increases the risk of infant mortality by an estimated 40%. In the recent decades research has emphasised that maternal smoking increases the risk of placenta praevia, abruptio placentae and premature rupture of membranes, this develops other adverse events including serious respiratory illness and asthma attacks and sudden infant death (Luanaigh

Some of the common things that are seen happening to babies when the mother smokes is babies born prematurely, too small or dying off before they are even born at all. Cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, including things like cyanide, lead, and at least 60 cancer-inducing compounds (Chris Woolston). When the baby’s only source of oxygen and nutrients is via your bloodstream, they will be consuming this toxic brew from the cigarettes because it goes no other place than the very bloodstream your unborn child feeds and breathes from. Out of those 4,000-plus compounds there are two in particular that are especially dangerous to your baby: nicotine and carbon monoxide. These toxins account for just about every smoking-related complication in pregnant. (Ob-gyn James

Smoking tobacco is known to be one of the largest epidemics the world has ever encountered. Smoking kills over seven million people per year. It not only kills, but also harms those who have not yet entered this world. Unborn babies impacted by their mothers who smoke can have life-altering problems (“WHO | Tobacco”, nd). Expecting mothers who smoke during the prenatal period could expect a 5 – 8% chance of a preterm or stillborn birth, a 13 – 19% chance of having a low birth-weight baby, or a 23 – 34% chance of sudden infant death syndrome. Fortunately, smoking awareness has garnered attention over the past two decades and smoking during pregnancy has decline in high socioeconomic countries like the United States (Meernik & Goldstein, 2015).

“Smoking makes it harder for women to get pregnant.” (Tobacco Use and Pregnancy, 2016). Every cigarette you smoke increases the risk of you and your unborn child. A pack a day habit during pregnancy can cut half a pound your child’s birth weight. While a few cigarettes are safer than a pack or two. Delivering a smaller baby can have negative consequences that may last a lifetime. The unborn child’s lungs may not work on their own,

are preventable (US Department of Health & Human Services, 2014). Additionally, the health care costs of smoking amount to $96 billion each year (Barendregt et al., 1997). Yet, this is an underestimate of the total costs of smoking because of the many externalities associated with cigarette consumption. Clean-up and secondhand smoke are two common examples of these externalities. For instance, cigarette butts

The key aspect to be discussed is the fact that main reason for the significant decline in the number of smokers in the past decade still alludes healthcare researchers. Some better known causes however, include better insurance coverage to help smokers who quit the habit. An equally important factor is the execution of stricter laws prohibiting more smokers to smoke in public places. As identified by the CDC, the percentage of U.S adults who smoke cigarettes have has declined from 20.9% in 2005 to 16.8% in 2014. The evidence also suggests that smoking was noticeably ln 2014 than in 2013. Sources reported that tobacco is the leading cause of preventable disease and death. Another essential point is that it kills 28,000 people every year in New York and afflicts nearly 600,000 residents with serious injuries directed to their smoking. In addition, smoking kills half a million Americans every year and costs about $300 billion dollars a year. Considering this report, it can be concluded that real progress in helping American smokers quit as well as more progress is possible. According to Dr Laurent Greillier from Nord Hospital in Marseille said “nowadays, everyone knows smoking is a risk factor for developing several cancers especially lung cancer. Based on the findings of healthcare experts, it can be argued that anti-smoking campaigns get the maximum credit for the reduced number of smokers with is not entirely deserved of them.

As a nation, the United States of America has recently declared a war against the tobacco industry. There are now graphic commercials and advertisements suggesting the negative effects of tobacco cigarette use. However, according to the World Health Organization there remain over one billion tobacco smokers in the world (Rom, Corelli, Valacchi & Reznick, 2015). Tobacco use has been associated with and linked to six leading causes of death in the world which include Ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, lower respiratory infections, chronic obtrusive pulmonary disease, tuberculosis and lung cancer (The Who, 2014). The World Health organization suggests that tobacco use is one of the most preventable causes of death in the world, but unfortunately, it remains a growing problem due to marketing, promotion, and lobbyists. As a social worker, it is important to consider this as an issue that is brought up by the client. According to the CDC (2013) 17.8% of adults 18 and older are current cigarette smokers.

Cigarette consumption is a worldwide growing business that concerns about the health problems issue publicly by providing all the maternal element that used to make health strategy weak and down. The impact of the anti-smoking campaign on the consumption of cigarettes is measured by fitting cigarette demand functions to pre-campaign dat, projecting "ahead" as if the campaign had not occurred, and then comparing these predictions with realized consumption. However, the cumulative effect of persistent publicity supported by other public policies, has been substantial: in the absence of the campaign, per capita consumption likely would have exceeded its actual 1975 value by 20 to 30 per cent. This is a conservative indication of the effectiveness of the campaign, for it ignores other potentially important and desirable behavior changes, such as the shift to low "tar" and nicotine cigarettes.