A few months ago a pediatrician explained to me that a few years ago it was very normal to receive a child in the hospital emergency room, cigar in hand, asking the mother what was wrong, and taking a drag while she explained that it was difficult for the child to breathe. He smoked in hospitals!
This, which seems to us a real madness that no doctor would do now, seems that it is not so serious when parents do it at home, or that I see in the nursing office, where many parents (minority, but many) tell me they smoke inside the house, but what "children are not at risk because they smoke in the kitchen with the extractor on".
Kitchen? Extractor? That?
Now I am no longer surprised, but at first I could not believe my ears. Smoking in the kitchen with the extractor? Let's see, if we go back to the hospital, what is the place where smoking seems crazy to us? Exactly one operating room. Imagine that an operation ends, the cleaning team enters to prepare the operating room for the next intervention and, on a break, they smoke a cigar there. Or imagine that in full operation the surgeon says "sweat ... cigar ...". Well, if you asked me what is the place in the house where I would never smoke, I would say the kitchen: it is the food operating room!
Of course, parents don't think about that, they just think about the extractor. They smoke in the kitchen because the exhaust removes the smoke. Now, is this true? Because the day we fry something, you can already have the extractor butt, that the kitchen smells like fried food. And as you do not change your clothes, you will go all day smelling of fritanga.
And that we clean below the extractor every time we cook, and from time to time we clean the filters, but there are less neat people that accumulate layers of fat in the extractor and that all it does is noise, because extract no longer extracts anything.
Children, smoking without choosing it
Then what happens does not have to happen, then the product of the smoked is in the kitchen, where children make a lot of life because, or they eat there, or they enter when they are hungry, or they are simply there because we are also there.
They are smokers because of their parents, because they have not even chosen it. Pasive smokers, logically, but with its associated symptoms. What are they? Well, as the US National Library of Medicine tells us:
- Asthma: more risk of children having asthma and, when they are asthmatic, children have to go to the hospital more frequently because they suffer more asthmatic crises.
- Infections: more risk of viral infections of the upper respiratory tract, bronchitis, otitis and pneumonia.
- Lung damage (acute lung toxicity): the lungs have poor behavior and do not function properly.
- Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): increased risk when there are babies at home.
What is safe?
So, speaking of security, the safe thing is Do not smoke or let anyone smoke inside the house. It cannot be that smoking is prohibited in public places and that thanks to that there are fewer premature babies and fewer cases of childhood asthma and then smoke at home.
You go out to the street, you go out to the balcony, to the terrace, and when you finish entering the house, you change your clothes, wash your hands and with this you will have managed to minimize the risks for those children who have no need to breathe tobacco.
Smoking with the window open?
No, neither. The open window is better than the closed window, of course, but in the same way that the extractor does not aspirate the air from the kitchen taking away all the smoke (much less) the outside does not take the air from the room, so it is only A half solution. No smoking at home. It is a short phrase and a simple rule that must be followed for the sake of children.
