Exposure to smoking can make you deaf

Earlier this week BBCi carried an article Smoking link to hearing problems. A fetus whose mother smoked during pregnancy or teenagers who smoke are at risk from experiencing "auditory attention deficits".

To quote the New Scientist:

Nicotine may cause the teenage brain to develop abnormality, resulting in changes to the structure of white matter [brain] ... Teenagers who smoke or whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are more likely to suffer from auditory attention deficits ....

Prenatal and adolescent exposure to tobacco smoke were associated with changes in white matter in brain pathways that relay signals to the war.

This had picked up on earlier research by Jacobsen, et al at Yale University, carrying on from previous work that stated in terms of prenatal exposure to nicotine:

... clinical studies have linked maternal smoking during pregnancy with persistent deficits ... [in] auditory processing in offspring. (Fried et al, 1997, 2003; McCartney et al, 1994)

And similarly for teenagers:

Nicotine is also disruptive to adolescent brain development (Abreu-Villaca et al., 2003) ... Neurodevelopment continues through adolescence.