The effects of secondhand smoke on young children are not temporary nor are the effects reversible. The American Heart Association estimates that 37,000 to 40,000 people die each year from heart and blood vessel disease caused by secondhand smoke. Infants and children who are exposed to tobacco smoke are more likely to have ear infections, bronchitis, pneumonia, chronic coughing, wheezing, and asthma than those without exposure. Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is higher among infants exposed to tobacco smoke.

Human infants are born with about 60 million of the 300 million alveoli they will need as adults. The body continues to construct alveoli until around age 8. Alveoli are where oxygen passes from the lungs into the bloodstream. In a study where baby monkeys were exposed to cigarette secondhand smoke before and after birth alveolar cells died twice as fast as they should have. How can new alveoli be created by the body during this critical developmental stage if they are dying off when they are supposed to be proliferating? The cigarette smoke caused cellular controls that regulate programmed cell death (apoptosis) to turn off.

This research suggests that if children do not grow their healthy lungs during this initial eight year window, they are not going to be able to make up this loss later in life therefore they will be stuck with less alveoli than they should have. Therefore the effects of secondhand smoke on young children are not temporary nor are the effects reversible. The research group had done a previous 15 year study in which rats exposed to secondhand smoke while in the womb and after birth developed hyper-reactive, or "ticklish," airways, which normally occurs in children and adults with asthma. The rodent’s airways remained hyper-reactive even when exposure to the secondhand smoke stopped. Therefore they concluded that early exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke created a long-lasting if not permanent asthma-like condition.

Secondhand smoke has also been proven to affect children’s behavior and ability to understand and reason. Apparently children who have been exposed regularly to secondhand smoke scored lower on tests in reading, math, logic and reasoning skills. Secondhand smoke contains over 50 cancer causing chemicals, and is known to be a human carcinogen. Two states (Arkansas and Louisiana) at the time of this study had made it illegal to smoke in a vehicle carrying young passengers and it is also being considered in California.

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