Counting the cost of passive smoking in children
Posted on 24 March 2010
Professor Christine Godfrey and Steve Parrott, from the Department of Health Sciences, investigated the financial costs of the effects of passive smoking on children as part of a wider report published by the Royal College of Physicians today.They estimate that passive smoking leads to primary care visits by children costing £9.7m and hospital admissions costing £13.6m every year. Providing children with drugs to treat asthma developed as a result of passive smoking costs a further £4m every year.
The costs to the NHS associated with passive smoking in children are both significant and avoidable.
Steve Parrott
The future costs of treating smokers who take up the habit because of exposure to parental smoking could be as much as £5.7m annually and their lost productivity due to illness and smoking breaks may be as much as £5.6m every year.
Professor Christine Godfrey, Head of the Department of Health Sciences, said: “It is important that we understand passive smoking has a serious cost and not just in terms of the impact on health.
“Our calculations demonstrate the direct financial burden placed on the NHS as a result of passive smoking in children but there will be further costs, for example in terms of educational achievement and earning potential, that should also be taken into consideration.”
Steve Parrott said: “The costs to the NHS associated with passive smoking in children identified in this report are both significant and avoidable.
“Interventions to reduce passive smoking have the potential to make cost savings to the NHS and in the workplace, as well as improving the health of children.”
The new report ‘Passive smoking and children’, by the Tobacco Advisory Group of the Royal College of Physicians, uses evidence-based studies and additional analysis funded by Cancer Research UK and carried out by the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies.
It suggests that each year one-in-five of all infant deaths, more than 20,000 cases of lower respiratory tract infection, 120,000 cases of middle ear disease, at least 22,000 new cases of wheeze and asthma and 200 cases of bacterial meningitis in children can be attributed to passive smoking.
Notes to editors:
- The University of York was ranked first in the country for health services research in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. Find out more about the Department of Health Sciences at www.york.ac.uk/healthsciences.
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