This paper reviews problems with the definition and estimation of interactions in epidemiologic studies. Methods for modeling interactions and dose-response also are reviewed, and references to more detailed literature are provided. Concepts are illustrated in the context of evaluating the joint effects of household radon exposure and environmental tobacco smoke.

We report findings of a survey of 555 women 18-35 years of age living in Northern Manhattan in New York City. The survey was conducted by the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) to learn what community women knew about environmental risks to health and what they did to protect themselves and their families, to validate the findings of focus groups held with community wom...

The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public convened a multidisciplinary workshop 12-13 September 1997 to assess current understanding of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure in the workplace. Invited participants represented areas of expertise in building systems, measurement of ETS, biomarkers of ETS exposure, time-activity patterns, and exposure models. Workshop participa...

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...

Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is widespread among women in Iran. This study aimed to explore the impact of education on health belief and environmental tobacco smoke exposure in pregnant women. This randomized trial was administrated to 130 pregnant women exposed to ETS. The face-to-face education was provided for the intervention group after completing the questionnaire compile...

BACKGROUND Animal studies and data from a single-center study suggest that tobacco smoke exposure may be a risk factor for precapillary pulmonary hypertension (PH). OBJECTIVE We aimed to survey tobacco smoke exposure in a large PH collective and to compare it with epidemiological data from healthy subjects. METHODS This is an international, multicenter, case-control study including patients...

OBJECTIVE This paper describes secondhand smoke (SHS) litigation over the past quarter century where non-smoking litigants have prevailed and attempts to decipher trends in the law that may impact the course of future cases. METHODS Since the early 1980s, the author has sought and examined legal cases in which SHS exposure is an important factor. Law library searches using the official report...

The aim of the study was to assess the effect of residential radon exposure on the risk of lung cancer in never-smokers and to ascertain if environmental tobacco smoke modifies the effect of residential radon. We designed a multicentre hospital-based case-control study in a radon-prone area (Galicia, Spain). All participants were never-smokers. Cases had an anatomopathologically confirmed prima...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether exposure to environmental tobacco smoke was associated with oxidative stress among patients hospitalised for acute myocardial infarction. DESIGN An existing cohort study of 1,261 patients hospitalised for acute myocardial infarction. SETTING Nine acute hospitals in Scotland. PARTICIPANTS Sixty never smokers who had been exposed to environmental tobacco smoke...