Smoking During Pregnancy Hurts Poor Most
LONDON (UPI) -- A British report suggests smoking while pregnant may be less damaging to a fetus than many people have been led to believe.
Emma Tominey, a research assistant at the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, said the effects are almost negligible if women stop smoking by the fifth month of pregnancy, The Times of London reported Thursday.
Tominey's report, based on data from the U.K. National Child Development Study, said women from the poorest backgrounds suffer from the highest rate of problems because smoking is often combined with unhealthy activities such as poor diet and consumption of alcohol, the newspaper said. The analysis suggested that middle class women suffer almost no damaging effects, even if they smoke throughout the entire pregnancy.
"Not only is it the low-socioeconomic-status mothers who choose to smoke, but they are also the mothers bearing the greatest burden from the smoking,'" Tominey said. "Therefore, any potential solution must offer help to these mothers, to target those with the worst habits and poorest records of child health."
Copyright 2008 by United Press International
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