Some of us in our 50s and beyond often comment about growing up in smoke-filled homes. Almost all the parents of my childhood smoked.
My husband's father was an insomniac and smoked all night in bed, in between reading. (My mother-in-law lived into her 90s, despite sharing a bedroom with the chain-smoking reader hubby, so no apparent long-lasting damage there.)
Anyway, a recent National Institutes of Health report listed all the dangers of secondhand smoke: 50,000 deaths attributed to it, same brain changes for the nonsmoker as the smoker, a propensity to smoking later in life for kids raised around smoking adults.
Makes me wonder how any of us made into adulthood, surrounded by the haze.
DId your parents smoke in your home? Any lifelong effects you can trace from it?
(AP file photo)
Spokesman-Review features writer Rebecca Nappi, along with Catherine Johnston, an Olympia, Wash., writer who works in hospital administration, write about issues of grief when facing serious illness, dying, death and other forms of loss.
Ask a question: Rebecca and Catherine answer grief questions in their syndicated EndNotes column for McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Email them at endnotescolumn@gmail.com.
999 W. Riverside, Spokane, WA 99201
P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210
Main switchboard: (509) 459-5000 • (800) 338-8801
Newsroom: (509) 459-5400 • (800) 789-0029
Customer service: (800) 338-8801
© Copyright 2013, The Spokesman-Review
Terms of use • Privacy policy • Copyright policy
Spokane7
67°
Get blog updates by email
Please keep it civil. Don't post comments that are obscene, defamatory, threatening, off-topic, an infringement of copyright or an invasion of privacy. Read our forum standards and community guidelines.
You must be logged in to post comments. Please log in here or click the comment box below for options.
comments powered by Disqus« Back to EndNotes