title: [Passive smoking: a risk factor in the home environment].
abstract: Recent studies of the health effects of air pollution have pointed out the importance of environmental smoke as a pollution source in household. Several studies showed that children or adults living with parents or other adults who smoke have an increased risk of several effects: respiratory illness in children, changes of respiratory function in children and adults, risk of lung cancer and risk of other cancer than lung cancer. A few epidemiological surveys have studied the relationship between passive smoking and lung cancer. The available epidemiological studies (10 case-control studies, and 3 prospective studies) have been identified and the results combined. There was a 35% increase of risk of lung cancer among nonsmokers living with smokers as compared with nonsmokers living with nonsmokers. However, adjustments due to some degree of misclassification of some nonsmokers who may be still exposed to other people's smoke, increased the risk, which was thus estimated as 53%. Furthermore, cancer risk deriving from cumulative household exposures to cigarette smoke was evaluated. Overall cancer risk increased progressively with the number of household members who smoked. These results were observed for both smoking-related cancer and other sites cancer. Finally, although some of these results need to be confirmed, recent views believe that sufficient evidence is provided that breathing other people's tobacco smoke cause health impairment and lung cancer.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Medicina Preventiva, Università degli Studi di Pavia.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fidanza
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Franco
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Malamani
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Moscato
mesh_terms: D002980:Climate; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology; D008834:Microclimate; D010947:Plants, Toxic; D012307:Risk Factors; D012906:Smoke / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000032:analysis; D014026:Nicotiana; D014028:Tobacco Smoke Pollution / Q000009:adverse effects*
chemical_list: D012906:Smoke; D014028:Tobacco Smoke Pollution
vernacular_title: Fumo passivo: un fattore di rischio dell'ambiente domestico.