If you don’t smoke, you won’t be exposing people around you to your smoke – and that’s good for everyone’s health.

Cigarette smoke is especially dangerous for kids.

If you’re having a baby, quitting smoking will lessen your risk of your baby weighing too little at birth. Your risk is even lower if you quit before you get pregnant, or in the first three months of being pregnant.

> Smoking and children
> Smoking and pregnancy

Smoking and children
Babies and children are at risk from breathing in second-hand cigarette smoke from people smoking around them. This is called passive smoking.

There is no safe exposure to cigarette smoke and passive smoking can increase your risk of a number of illnesses.

Passive smoking can cause lower respiratory tract infections in children such as bronchitis and pneumonia, and cause them to cough and wheeze.

Asthma can get worse in children because of passive smoking, and it's also linked to middle ear diseases.

> Smoking and pregnancy

Smoking and pregnancy
If you smoke when you're pregnant, your baby is exposed to exactly the same chemicals you are. The chemicals carry along the umbilical cord. Blood flows from you to your baby through this cord and carries all the things it needs to grow.

Smoking during pregnancy limits the amount of oxygen that can get to your baby. Every puff you take on a cigarette increased the carbon monoxide in your bloodstream. The carbon monoxide replaces oxygen in your blood and so it reduces the amount available to your baby. This is not good for your baby and can place stress on its heart.

Smoking and pregnancy cont.
If you smoke while you're pregnant, you run a greater chance of:

• miscarriage
• premature birth
• stillbirth
• complications with labour
• smaller than average baby (which leads to a higher risk of death and disease in infancy and early childhood)
• your baby suffering genetic changes, which will be passed on to future generations
• impaired lung development
• perinatal death (the baby dying at or shortly after birth)