LONDON, Feb 14, 2008 (UPI via COMTEX) -- A British report suggests smoking
while pregnant may be less damaging to a fetus than many people have been led to
believe.
Emma Tominey, a research assistant at the Center for Economic Performance at the
London School of Economics, said the effects are almost negligible if women stop
smoking by the fifth month of pregnancy, The Times of London reported Thursday.
Tominey's report, based on data from the U.K. National Child Development Study,
said women from the poorest backgrounds suffer from the highest rate of problems
because smoking is often combined with unhealthy activities such as poor diet
and consumption of alcohol, the newspaper said. The analysis suggested that
middle class women suffer almost no damaging effects, even if they smoke
throughout the entire pregnancy.
"Not only is it the low-socioeconomic-status mothers who choose to smoke, but
they are also the mothers bearing the greatest burden from the smoking,'"
Tominey said. "Therefore, any potential solution must offer help to these
mothers, to target those with the worst habits and poorest records of child
health."
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