Exposure to second hand tobacco smoke at home and child smoking at age 11 among British children with and without intellectual disability.
Poverty, not disability care demands, explains why British kids with ID breathe more smoke and try cigarettes earlier.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers tracked British kids from birth to age 11. They asked parents about smoking in the home. They also asked the children if they had ever tried a cigarette.
The team compared kids with intellectual disability to kids without. They checked if family income and parent education changed the results.
What they found
Children with ID were more likely to live with second-hand smoke. They were also more likely to have tried smoking by age 11.
When the team added family income to the model, the smoke-exposure gap almost vanished. Money problems, not disability care, drove the difference.
How this fits with other research
Libero et al. (2016) looked at the same UK cohort and found the same pattern for alcohol. Kids with ID were already drinking and liking it more by age 11. Together the papers show early substance-use risk starts across the board.
Rose et al. (2000) painted the opposite picture in adults. In UK residential homes, adults with ID smoked very little. The new child data suggest either a generational shift or that community-living kids face more smoke at home.
Dumont et al. (2014) followed the group into adulthood. Poor adults with ID still rated their health as much worse. The smoke story is one early step in a lifelong SES-health chain.
Why it matters
You now know that higher smoke exposure in ID is a poverty signal, not a disability trait. When you see a child with ID living in a smoking home, focus on family resources first. Link parents to free quit lines, income supports, and low-cost nicotine replacement. Early action can cut both second-hand smoke and the child’s own first puff.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The exposure of children to second hand tobacco smoke (SHS) is a well-established risk factor for a range of adverse health conditions in childhood and later life. Little is known about the extent to which children with intellectual disability (ID) may be exposed to SHS. Our aim in this study was to estimate the risk of childhood exposure to SHS and early experience of smoking among children with and without ID in a nationally representative cohort of British children. METHOD: Secondary analysis of data extracted from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study, a nationally representative sample of over 18,000 UK children born 2000-2002. RESULTS: Children with ID are significantly more likely than their peers to be exposed to SHS and to have themselves experimented with smoking by age 11. Controlling for between-group differences in socio-economic position eliminated the increased risk of exposure to SHS and significantly attenuated, but did not eliminate, increased risk of experimenting with smoking by age 11. CONCLUSIONS: Levels of exposure to SHS among children with ID are typical of those of families of children without ID living in similar socio-economic circumstances. The results lend no support to the hypothesis that increased rates of parental smoking may be associated with any additional 'burden of care' experienced by parents of children with ID. Nevertheless, it will be important to ensure that evidence-based interventions to reduce exposure to SHS are tailored to the specific needs of families supporting children with ID (e.g. through the provision of disability-friendly child care arrangements).
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2016 · doi:10.1111/jir.12247