INTRODUCTION Tobacco smoke is a source of exposure to thousands of toxic chemicals including lead, a chemical of longstanding public health concern. We assessed trends in blood lead levels in youths and adults with cotinine-verified tobacco smoke exposure by using 10 years of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. METHODS Geometric mean levels of blood lead are presen...

Environmental tobacco smoke has been regarded as one of the most important public health issues. It has been estimated that approximately 700 millions of children in the world are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). In this study parental smoking habits were determined. Then, the relationship between parent-reported estimates of children's exposure to ETS at home and children's urinar...

Smoking in public places is a hot debate presently in Europe. A number of legislative bodies in Europe have already made policy decisions on the issue of smoking in public places. Scientific evidence relating to this debate has been reported in a diverse range of publications such as BMJ, Indoor air and the BSJ. On inspection much of the reporting concludes negatively on the performance of vent...

OBJECTIVES Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is often encountered in the workplace. There have been efforts to apply and enforce state laws limiting workplace smoking. There has been little study of the relative effectiveness of state and/or local laws in affecting both rates of workplace ETS exposure and adult smoking rates. This study investigates these hypotheses, as well as the effect of th...

Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) has been shown to have many untoward healh effects, however no study directly evaluated the effect of ETS on diarrheal diseases. In this case control study we aimed to define the risk factors including ETS for diarrheal diseases in 6-18 months old infants who live in the capital of Turkey. All of them have access to pipe water and toilets. Infants who were admi...

Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is an aerosol that contains both vapor and particulate phase components. However, due to their nature, the two aerosol phases rarely correlate well. An accurate determination of ETS levels in indoor air, therefore, requires a proper tracer of both phases. One critical aspect of an ideal ETS tracer is that it should “remain in a fairly consistent ratio to the in...

Objectives We examined the prevalence of tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke among middle-school students in Korea using the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) in 2013. Methods The GYTS in Korea was conducted between July and August 2013 by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data were collected using a self-administered anonymous questionnaire from a nationally rep...

BACKGROUND Over the last few years a decreasing trend in smoking has occurred not only in the general population but also during pregnancy. Several countries have implemented laws requiring all enclosed workplace and public places to be free of second hand smoke (SHS). In Spain, legislation to reduce SHS was implemented in 2005. The present study examines the possible effect of this legislation...

Risk factors for rhinitis, asthma and respiratory infections in the home environment were studied by a questionnaire survey. Totally 5775 occupants (≥ 18 years old) from a stratified random sample of multi-family buildings in Sweden participated (46%). 51.0% had rhinitis in the last 3 months (current rhinitis); 11.5% doctor diagnosed asthma; 46.4% respiratory infections in the last 3 months and...

BACKGROUND Acute respiratory illness (ARI) is the most common cause of acute presentations and hospitalisations of young Indigenous children in Australia and New Zealand (NZ). Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) from household smoking is a significant and preventable contributor to childhood ARI. This paper describes the protocol for a study which aims to test the efficacy of a family-centred tob...