Smoking Bans Help Curb Kids' Severe Asthma Attacks, New Research Shows

Smoking bans spare many children with asthma from being hospitalized, a finding that suggests smoke-free laws have even greater health benefits than previously believed, the Associated Press reports.

Other studies have charted the decline in adult heart attack rates after smoking bans were adopted. The new study, conducted in Scotland, looked at asthma-related hospitalizations of kids, which fell 13 percent a year after smoking was barred in 2006 from workplaces and public buildings, including bars and restaurants.

Before the ban, admissions had been rising 5 percent a year in Scotland, which has a notoriously poor health record among European countries.

Earlier United States studies, in Arizona and Kentucky, reached similar conclusions. But this was the largest study of its kind and offered the strongest case that smoking bans can bring immediate health improvements for many people.

"The effects of smoke-free laws are way bigger than you would expect," said Stanton Glantz, a University of California-San Francisco researcher who specializes in the health effects of smoking, told the A.P. He was not involved in the new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Cigarette smoke is a trigger for asthma attacks. So researchers reasoned that tracking severe cases was perhaps the best way to measure a smoking ban's immediate effect on children.

About 40 percent of American children who go to hospitals because of asthma attacks live with smokers – and 21 percent of U.S. adults smoke, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics. U.S. research has shown that smoking bans were followed by a decline in smoking at home.

Smoking bans have become increasingly common, where 35 states and the District of Columbia have laws that bar smoking in workplaces or restaurants and bars, or both. And more than 3,100 cities and towns have their own restrictions such as smoking bans in parks and beaches such as is the case in California.

Recently, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced city officials will pursue a broad extension of the city's smoking ban to parks, beaches and pedestrian plazas throughout the city.