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Smoking And Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, UK 

The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths (FSID) welcomes the research (1) from the FSID Research Unit at Bristol University.

Professor George Haycock, FSID's scientific adviser says: "The figures show that maternal smoking is now the most important avoidable risk factor for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

"If no women smoked in pregnancy, about 60 per cent of cot deaths could be avoided. This means that in the UK the number of deaths could fall from around 300 a year to 120 a year."

Cot death is still the biggest killer of babies over one month old in the UK today, claiming more lives than road traffic accidents, leukaemia and meningitis put together.

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