Recent research confirms that passive smoking increases the likelihood of developing lung diseases.
Recent research reconfirms that passive smoking increases the likelihood of developing lung disease. Exposure to passive tobacco smoke during childhood increases the risk of lung cancer in adulthood by more than threefold.Researchers from the Imperial College London, UK, analysed data from 303,000 subjects. The analyses focused on 123,479 subjects who provided information about exposure to passive smoking. During more than 7 years of follow-up, 97 people were diagnosed with lung cancer, 20 were diagnosed with upper respiratory malignancies, and 14 died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. In the overall analysis, exposure to environmental tobacco smoke raised the risk of all respiratory diseases by 30% and lung cancer by 34%. It was also found that the risks of passive smoking were greater for ex-smokers than for people who never smoked. People who were exposed as children to passive smoking for several hours on a daily basis were 3.6-times more likely to develop lung cancer during adulthood than their unexposed counterparts.
Therefore environmental tobacco smoke is a risk factor for lung cancer and other respiratory disease, particularly in ex-smokers.
British Medical Journal,
January 2005
January 2005
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