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Estimates suggest that anywhere between 4.8 and 5.5 million children in the U.S. live in households where they are exposed to secondhand smoke, putting them at greater risk for multiple health problems. Now, new research suggests that secondhand smoke exposure can increase the odds of developing certain mental and behavioral disorders by 50 percent.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health looked at the data generated by a 2007 national health survey, analyzing the responses of the parents of guardians of more than 55,000 children ages 11 and younger from throughout the U.S. They found that children who were exposed to secondhand smoke were twice as likely to develop so-called neurobehavioral disorders — including learning disabilities, ADD or ADHD, and conduct or behavior disorders — than were children who lived in smoke-free homes.

“We estimate that 274,000 cases of the most common neurobehavioral disorders could have been prevented with smoke-free homes,” said Hillel Alpert, ScM, a senior research associate at Harvard and one of the study’s authors.

Alpert added that the study, which was published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, did not find that secondhand smoke directly caused any of these mental health issues. However, he argued that the “strong evidence of association” between secondhand smoke exposure and the incidence of certain disorders might underline a causal relationship that could be discovered with future longterm investigations.

Indeed, a growing body of research is focused on the link between secondhand smoke and mental health problems.