Early exposure to tobacco smoke may speed the aging process

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Early exposure to tobacco smoke, firsthand and secondhand, may make your body age more quickly, a European study suggests. The study in the journal Environment International builds on earlier findings that environmental factors during pregnancy and early childhood can change a child’s metabolism and physiology, sometimes in irreversible ways.

Researchers with the Barcelona Institute for Global Health found that smoking during pregnancy and exposure to smoke in early childhood were associated in a small way with a faster aging process, measured by changes in the DNA of 1,173 children aged 6 to 11 in a sample taken across Europe, and additional samples from 83 pregnancies and 103 infants.