News at HSPHAngela Paradis, research fellow in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, was interviewed Nov. 15, 2010, on the BBC’s World Service radio news about her new study that showed that women in a study who smoked a pack a day or more during pregnancy had a 30% increased chance of having children who would grow up to be arrested as adults. The paper was published by the British Medical Association online Nov. 15 in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Paradis and her colleagues analyzed the criminal and health records of nearly 4,000 Americans, age 33-40, whose mothers were enrolled from 1959 to 1966 in a long-term Rhode Island health study that tracked pregnancy and birth conditions. Even when mental illness, poverty and other such factors were considered, the link still held, she said. The risk was highest among heavy smokers, or those who smoked 20 cigarettes or more a day while pregnant.
Paradis points out that this does not mean that children of heavy smokers are “bad” or “doomed.” Many children of smoking mothers do not go on to be arrested as adults, she said.
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Department of Society, Human Development, and Health
