Children are at an increased risk of developing asthma if their fathers were exposed to second-hand smoke as children, a study by researchers from the Australia’s University of Melbourne has found.
Published on Thursday in the European Respiratory Journal, the study also demonstrated that a child’s asthma risk increases further if their father became a smoker after being exposed to passive smoke as a child.
According to the researchers, these findings highlight the damage smoking can do not just to smokers and their children but even to their grandchildren.
Based on data from the Tasmanian Longitudinal Health Study (TAHS), which began in 1968 and observed 1,689 children, their fathers, and their paternal grandparents, researchers compared data on whether children had developed asthma by age seven with data on whether their fathers had grown up with parents who smoked….