On average, Canadian children spend 90% of their time indoors. For this reason, the quality of the indoor air that they breathe is very important and can significantly affect children's health.

Indoor air can become contaminated in a variety of ways. Some common sources of indoor air pollution include mould, dust, chemicals from building and cleaning products, and animal dander. However the single most common and harmful indoor air pollutant is environmental tobacco smoke (ETS).

What is ETS?

Environmental tobacco smoke is a combination of two types of tobacco smoke; second-hand smoke and sidestream smoke. Second-hand smoke is the smoke that is exhaled into the air by smokers. Sidestream smoke is produced by the burning end of a cigarette, cigar or pipe.

ETS, like smoke that is inhaled into a smoker's lungs, contains over 4000 different chemicals, including at least 50 that are known to cause cancer in humans. ETS also contains poisons like arsenic, benzene, lead, cyanide and formaldehyde.

ETS can't be contained in one place. It acts like a drop of ink in a glass of water, spreading throughout an area and contaminating the air for smokers and non-smokers alike. For this reason, confining smokers to one room in a home, or one area of a workplace doesn't reduce the risk for exposure to ETS. Similarly, ventilation systems, open windows, and air filters or purifiers may dilute the smoke, but they do not make it safe. There is no known safe level of exposure to the cancer-causing chemicals in tobacco smoke. Once a cigarette, cigar or pipe has been put out, ETS stays in the environment on skin, clothes, food, carpets and furniture, and is still toxic.

How can ETS affect a child's health?

Exposure to ETS damages children's health. Brief periods of exposure can lead to eye, nose and throat irritation, as well as headaches, dizziness, nausea, wheezing and coughing. Children that live in a smoke-filled environment are more likely to:

•  suffer from breathing problems such as asthma, and sustain damage to their lungs
•  suffer from chronic respiratory illness and middle ear infections
•  become smokers themselves if their parents smoke

ETS has also been associated with:

•  Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), where babies die suddenly in their sleep
•  illnesses including pneumonia, bronchitis, croup, leukemia and other childhood cancers

What can I do as a parent or caregiver to protect children from ETS?

1. Make your home or child care environment a smoke-free space. This means never allowing smoking in your home or child care setting. This includes not allowing smoking in the basement, bathroom, by an open window or across the room from a child.
2. If you are a smoker, consider quitting. If you can't or don't want to quit, smoke outside, well away from building air intakes and open windows.
3. Protect children from smoke in public places. Do not smoke or allow smoking in the family car, even if no children are present. Choose child care where no one smokes, and restaurants where smoking is not permitted.
4. Let your caregiver know that you don't allow your child to be in smoke-filled environments. In addition to your own home, this means that you expect the child care environment, and any other place that your child is taken to, to be smoke-free. Be sure to ask about the policy on smoking anywhere that your child spends his or her time. Almost all licensed child care centres have policies about smoking, but family-based child care settings may not.
5. If you are pregnant and you smoke, quit. Ask all of the smokers you know not to smoke around you, and avoid public places where smoking is allowed. Children of mothers who smoke during pregnancy, or after birth, are at a greater risk of dying due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Furthermore, these children are more likely to have long-term problems with intellectual capacity, achievement and behaviour. When pregnant women are exposed to ETS, this can slow the growth and development of the fetus, resulting in lower birth weight and a greater chance of complications during pregnancy and delivery. In particular, the maturation, growth, development and function of the fetus' lungs are negatively affected.

Healthy Spaces © was developed by the Canadian Institute of Child Health (www.cich.ca) in partnership with the Canadian Child Care Federation (www.cccf-fcsge.ca), funded by Human Resources Development Canada. Healthy Spaces (www.cfc-efc.ca/healthyspaces) is housed on Child & Family Canada (www.cfc-efc.ca).