Worldwide tobacco smoking kills nearly 6 million people each year, including more than 600,000 non-smokers who die from smoke exposure. Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS, also called secondhand smoke, involuntary smoke, or passive smoke) is the combination of sidestream smoke, the smoke given off by a burning tobacco product and mainstream smoke, the smoke exhaled by smokers. People may be expos...

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Using an in vitro human small airway epithelium model, we assessed the biological impact of an aerosol from a candidate modified-risk tobacco product, the tobacco heating system (THS) 2.2, to investigate the potential reduced risk of THS2.2 aerosol exposure compared with cigarette smoke. Following the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine and the Tobacco Product Assessment Consortium, in...

BACKGROUND Reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes to make them non-addictive has been widely discussed as a potential strategy for tobacco regulation. A major concern with nicotine reduction is that smokers will compensate for reduced nicotine by smoking more cigarettes and/or smoking more intensively, thereby increasing their exposure to tobacco smoke toxins. This study examined whether g...

Functional biological markers of environmental exposures are important in epidemiological studies of disease risk. Such markers not only provide a measure of the exposure, they also reflect the degree of physiological and biochemical response to the exposure. In an observational study, using DNA microarrays, we show that it is possible to distinguish between 85 individuals exposed and unexposed...

BACKGROUND Smokefree workplace policies have successfully limited indoor exposure to secondhand smoke. However, exposure still exists in other indoor locations, most notably in the home. PURPOSE This paper examines change in the public's awareness of secondhand smoke harm, exposure to secondhand smoke, and prevalence of smokefree home rules between 1999 and 2010 in Minnesota. METHODS The Mi...

BACKGROUND Although public health programs have led to a substantial decrease in the prevalence of tobacco smoking, the adverse health effects of tobacco smoke exposure are by no means a thing of the past. In the United States, 4 of 10 school-aged children and 1 of 3 adolescents are involuntarily exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke (SHS), with children of minority ethnic backgrounds and those l...

BACKGROUND Tobacco use is a leading preventable risk factor for many chronic disorders, which are expected to account for an increasing share of the global disease burden. As part of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS), we aimed to assess the effect of tobacco use by young people on global mortality. METHODS GYTS is a school-based survey of students aged 13-15 years. The survey was underta...

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). An American has a coronary event (heart attack) nearly every 25 seconds, resulting in death about every minute. Smoking is the leading risk factor for heart disease. Evidence suggests that exposure to secondhand smoke also can result in adverse health effects, inc...

BACKGROUND Despite public awareness that tobacco secondhand smoke (SHS) is harmful, many people still assume that marijuana SHS is benign. Debates about whether smoke-free laws should include marijuana are becoming increasingly widespread as marijuana is legalized and the cannabis industry grows. Lack of evidence for marijuana SHS causing acute cardiovascular harm is frequently mistaken for evi...