The number of mothers who admit smoking during pregnancy has fallen by nearly 12%, according to a study at the Coombe hospital, Dublin.

The proportion dropped from just over 23% to just under 21%, less than the smoking rate in the general population, which was 27% last year, but still higher than in other countries. In Massachusetts, America, for example, only 7% of pregnant women admit to smoking.

“When you compare the rates of smoking in pregnant women who attended the Coombe before and after the [smoking in public] ban, it’s a significant reduction,” said Luke Clancy, director-general of the Tobacco Free Research Institute (TFI).

“We are not saying the ban necessarily caused it, but we hope it influenced them ... People become more aware of the smoking hazard and the problems it brings. Women who smoke are more than twice as likely to have low birth-weight [less than 2.5kg] babies.”

The researchers, from the Coombe, Royal College of Surgeons and TFI, compared 7,854 babies born in 2003, the year before the smoking ban was introduced, against those delivered in 2005.

The survey was published in BJOG, an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology.

Smoking in pregnancy has been linked to premature births, miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth and neonatal death.

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