Ban on smoking in public places reduces the number of premature births

Researchers from Hasselt University in Belgium, have shown that banning smoking in public places reduces the number of children born prematurely.

The research, which analyzed 600 000 deliveries, discovered three successive drops in the number of babies born at less than 37 weeks, each of the reductions occurring after a new phase of the introduction of smokefree laws.

According to the researchers, there was no such trend in the period before they give the prohibitions put in place.

The study reinforces the theory that the ban on smoking in public places reduces the number of premature births. It comes after a Scottish study of 2012 found a similar pattern.

However, experts Scots could not determine with certainty whether the smokefree law was the cause of the change, because premature births began to decline before the ban.

In a recent study, researchers were able to analyze the rate of preterm deliveries after each phase of implementation of smokefree law in Belgium.

Public places and most workplaces were the focus of the first bans in 2006, followed in 2007 by the restaurants and bars that serve meals in 2010.

The results showed that the rate of preterm births declined every phase of the ban, with more impact after application in restaurants and bars.

After the phases of 2007 and 2010, premature births fell about 3% in each period.

According to the researchers, the changes could not be explained by other factors, such as maternal age and socioeconomic status or effects as changes in air pollution and influenza epidemics.

Lead researcher, Tim Nawrot said that even a small reduction in the duration of pregnancy had been linked in other studies to adverse health conditions in childhood and adulthood. "As the bans occurred in three different times, we show that there is a consistent pattern of reduced risk of preterm delivery. This supports the idea that smokefree laws provide benefits to public health from the earliest moments of life," he concludes.

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