A NEW campaign telling parents the dangers of smoking in their homes is being launched in Scotland.
An advert stressing that harmful chemicals linger in the air up to five hours after cigarettes have been put out has been released as part of the drive which aims to spare 50,000 children from second-hand smoke.
Children's immune syst-ems are not fully developed and they breathe quicker than adults, affecting their risks from passive smoking.
Dr Sean Semple, of the University of Aberdeen, helped to inform the camp-aign. He said: "Our research group has measured pollution levels in more than 100 homes across Scotland. Smoking homes have very high concentrations of fine particles that tend to be much higher than the worst pollution on even the busiest roads in Scotland.
"Second-hand smoke also lingers for a long time."
In a UK first, the Scottish Government has set a target to reduce the proportion of children exposed to second-hand smoke in the home from 12% to 6% by 2020.
Minister for Public Health Michael Matheson said: "This campaign isn't about a person's choice to smoke, it's about people who smoke having the facts so they can smoke in a way that doesn't harm their children."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article