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Pregnant women exposed to large amounts of secondhand smoke -- such as when their husband smokes -- are more likely to miscarry during the first days of their pregnancy, new research shows.

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Consequently, women trying to conceive should also try to avoid places where people are smoking, he said. And if their significant others smoke, they should stop, Xu added.

People are generally aware of the dangers of smoking, he said, but "it's very good for the public to know that passive smoking is not good either."

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Also, the wives of heavy smokers also appeared to take slightly longer to achieve a pregnancy that lasted at least 6 weeks than the wives of light or non-smokers, the authors report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

In an interview, Xu noted that some of the miscarriages occurred very early in a woman's pregnancy. Under normal circumstances, these women may have not even realized they were pregnant, thinking that the heavy bleeding accompanying the miscarriage was simply their period, he said.

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