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Excerpts from A New Smoking Peril

By Stephen P. Williams, Newsweek [04/24/00]

Surprisingly, 13 percent of pregnant American women smoke, despite the well-known risk of low birth weight. Here's new impetus to quit: fetuses whose mothers smoke are 50 to 70 percent more likely to develop a cleft lip or palate, according to University of Michigan professor Kevin Chung. Chung says his study of 2,000 children suggests that some as-yet-unidentified toxin in tobacco smoke causes the mutations, which strike one in 700 births. In addition to marring a person's appearance, a cleft lip or palate can affect his ability to eat, breathe, hear and speak.