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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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New Report: Impact of Tobacco Use on Reproductive and Child Health [02/12/04]
Excerpts from: Smoking linked to impotence in young men
By
Sarah Boseley The Guardian [02/12/04]
The true scale of the damage that smoking is doing to our sexual and reproductive health became clear yesterday as doctors published a comprehensive report blaming cigarettes for the impotence of 120,000 young men, 1,200 cervical cancers, up to 5,000 miscarriages and for many couples' fertility problems.
Both partners should stop smoking before they attempt to conceive a child, says the report from the British Medical Association. It recommends that pregnant women should be entitled to stay off work with full pay if their employer cannot guarantee them protection from inhaling other people's cigarette smoke, which could harm their unborn child.
Between 14,000 and 19,000 babies were born with low birthweight because their parents smoked, he said, which meant that not only were they small, but they were likely to be sickly and have continuing health problems. The report also attributes up to 420 stillbirths and 260 deaths of babies under four weeks old to smoking and underlines the known link with cot death.
Pregnant women have a legal right to protection from health risks in the workplace under European law, she said. "That has to include protection from people who smoke." Nine months of pregnancy should not have to be spent in purdah, she said. "We all have a duty to make the workplace and home and public places as safe as possible for pregnant women."
Smoking was recognised as a cause of cervical cancer - the biggest cause of cancer death in women worldwide - by the World Health Organisation in 2002.
Its main cause is infection with the human papilloma virus. Infection does not always progress to cancer, but the report says it is more likely to do so in smokers.
The report says that the message that smoking damages fertility is still not fully getting through. "Women are generally aware that they should not smoke while pregnant but the message needs to be far stronger. Men and women who think they might want children one day should bin cigarettes," said Dr Nathanson.
Women who smoke take longer to conceive than those who do not, and their chances of conceiving at all are reduced by between 10% and 40%. The more cigarettes she smokes, the longer it is likely to take a woman to get pregnant. She may not get pregnant at all - women are twice as likely to be infertile if they smoke.
Smoking also reduces the quality of semen. Not only do male smokers have a lower sperm count, but the sperm is more likely to be malformed, and byproducts of nicotine have been found to interfere with their motility, making it less likely that they will reach and fuse with the egg.
Inhaling other people's smoke during pregnancy can have ill effects on the baby, particularly if the woman works in a smoky atmosphere, such as a bar or restaurant. One study in the UK showed that the babies of women with the heaviest exposure to secondhand smoke were on average more than 70g lighter than the babies of those who were least exposed. Smoking can reduce the quantity and quality of milk produced by breastfeeding mothers.
Click Here to Download this Entire Report from the British Medical Association (PDF format)
Click Here for More Information about this Report from the BMA
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