A Bristol health expert has compared smoking near a baby to drink-driving.

Professor of infant health at Bristol University, Peter Fleming, has highlighted the dangers of secondhand smoke as part of a regional campaign to make parents aware of the impact their smoking could have on youngsters.

A new survey found more than one in five adults in the region still allow smoking inside their home.

Smokefree South West, the organisation set up to tackle smoking in the region, has launched a campaign in response.

Prof Fleming said: "I have been researching the causes of cot death in infants for almost 30 years and one of the most significant findings from our studies was the dramatic effect that exposure to secondhand smoke had on the risk of sudden death in infants.

"In a very large study that included almost half a million births showed that for every hour of the day that infants are routinely exposed to tobacco smoke, the risk of cot death increased by almost 100 per cent; thus infants exposed to tobacco smoke for eight or more hours per day had eight times the risk of dying as those never exposed. As a consequence of this study, we suggested that smoking in the presence of an infant or a pregnant woman should be viewed as being almost as anti-social as drinking and driving.

"I hope that this regional campaign will prompt South West smokers to think again about what effect their habit is having on their babies, children and other non-smokers around them."

Fiona Andrews, director of Smokefree South West, said:"The cocktail of more than 4,000 chemicals in secondhand smoke causes cot death, asthma and respiratory illnesses in children.

"More worrying is that it's not always obvious where the smoke is, because 85 per cent of it is invisible so waving away any smoke that you can see is pointless. I am sure that if more people realised just how dangerous secondhand smoke is to their children they would be really surprised and would want to do everything in their power to make their home and car completely smoke free."