Indoor Air Cartoon Journal, May 2019, Volume 2, #59

Sudden infant syndrome (SID) is when a child of about a year or less suddenly died with no exact cause. At this very young age, when all the organs are just developing, any external trigger, especially those of toxic nature, can potentially increase the risk of an infant dying suddenly. Pollutants from tobacco smoke are examples of such triggers. Prenatal exposure of a foetus and postnatal exposure as an infant due to smoking mother, spouse, and relatives or by being in an environment polluted with tobacco smoke, will gradually increase the concentration of the pollutants in the body. These pollutants are poisons, with a high level of toxicity. They are agents for the structural disruption of human cells functional performance. When the cells are damaged, in no time, tissues and organs performance will be compromised.

With cells, tissues, and organs that are not fully developed to have an immune system that can effectively counter the toxicity of the pollutants, the risk of SID syndrome occurrence in an infant is high. It will be morally right to ban pregnant women from smoking for the sake of their unborn child. Support and education should be provided to these women to help prevent or lower their urge for smoking. Awareness of the danger of people smoking in the vicinity of children, especially in the indoor environment, should also be made a priority. How can social and economic factors increase the occurrence of SID symptom caused by pre- and postnatal exposure to tobacco smoke? What can be done to reduce the effects of these factors? Is there any hope in reducing the social and economic factors?

Do you want to know more about this topic? Read Fleming and Blair (2007), Golding (1997), and Klonoff-Cohen et al. (1995) papers.