Tobacco.org

Scientific Discovery / Eliot R. Spindel 

Smoking during pregnancy is responsible for nearly 10 percent of fetal deaths and 10 percent of infant deaths during the first year of life. Infants whose mothers smoke during pregnancy are born with reduced lung function and are at increased risk for severe respiratory illness and development of childhood asthma. Despite these grim statistics more than 12 percent of women still smoke during pregnancy, which means that 450,000 infants are at risk through no choice of their own.

Eliot Spindel and his co-workers are studying the mechanism by which smoking during pregnancy harms the fetus. They have determined that one of the primary factors is nicotine, which readily crosses the placenta and affects fetal development.

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