'Stop it, it's bad for you and me': experiences of and views on passive smoking among primary-school children in Liverpool.

This article looks at how children between the ages of 4 and 8 years report they feel when they are exposed to passive smoking and how they react in these situations. Data were collected annually from a cohort of 250 primary school children, which was tracked from their Reception Classes to Year 3 across six Liverpool schools. Quantitative and qualitative methods were employed--including a survey, the Draw and Write investigative technique and semi-structured interviews. Findings showed that children had some understanding of the health problems that passive smoking posed to both themselves and the smoker. Between the ages of 4 and 7 the majority of children held negative feelings about being exposed to smoke, but at the age of 8 there is a clear decline in negative expressions. Most of the children were prepared verbally to confront a smoker, usually a parent, in order to get them to stop, but rarely took direct action and left the room themselves. Results suggest that children would be receptive to information on the dangers of smoking during the early years of primary school, while the dialogue between children and their parents suggests that the latter have a key role to play in strategies to tackle passive smoking in the home.